Premier Hockey Federation – The River City Renegade

Let’s talk about the PWHL, the sports media and Cabbage Patch Kids…PWHL players sticking their necks out…PWHL Minny outdraws the Jets…the Drab Slab still failing on the female file…Jen jawin’ with the ol’ boys on Sportsnet…and other things on my mind

When you’ve been taking in oxygen for 73-plus years, you’ve seen some fads.

You know, things like Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. The Pet Rock. Hula hoops. Hacky sacks. Mood rings. Lava lamps. Davy Crockett coon-skin caps. Rubik’s Cube. ThighMaster. The Macarena. Lava lamps. Waterbeds.

Some of them lasted about as long as summer wages, while others had considerable staying power.

I mention these now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t items because there’s a faddish feel to the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

I mean, the upstart PWHL is clearly the flavor du jour and, judging by the smiling faces in the crowd, it’s quite evident that parents don’t have to drag their kids to the rink kicking and screaming. Our little people can’t get enough of their female hockey heroes.

The demand has been significant, with these head counts to date: Toronto 2,537 (sellout); Ottawa 8,318 (world record for professional Ponytail Puck); Boston 4,012; New York 2,152; Minnesota 13,316 (new world record). That’s not to ignore a boffo TV audience for the New York-Toronto opening act (2.9 million on CBC, TSN and Sportsnet).

It all adds up to a feel-good story and, notably, early indications tell us that media is all-in on the PWHL.

It’s been sunshine, lollipops and a sprinkling of fairy dust since the rollout began in the Republic of Tranna on New Year’s Day, with the first five skirmishes of the season airing on both linear TV and online, and there’s been no shortage of attention from the print side.

Indeed, The Athletic reports that scant seconds after the Montreal-Ottawa game at The Arena at TD Place in the nation’s capital last Tuesday, home side head coach Carla MacLeod encountered a gathering of two dozen news snoops and seven TV microphones.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “This is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Meanwhile, Ponytail Puck was front page of the newspaper in Toronto, Ottawa and Boston. Not just front page of sports. Front page of…the…newspaper.

PWHL predecessors—Canadian Women’s Hockey League, Premier Hockey Federation—were never favored with that level of interest. Any reporters who attended CWHL games came dressed as pallbearers.

Question is, what does the media do once the PWHL’s new-car smell has worn off? Do those Page One articles, top-of-the-hightlight-show mentions and live broadcasts on multiple channels disappear?

I mean, as the new kid on the jock block settled in comfortably during the past week, I couldn’t help but recall a Winnipeg Free Press editorial from last February.

The opinion piece spoke to an increasingly nasty dispute between Soccer Canada and the country’s national women’s side, and it was quite scolding in tone, mentioning “ugly gender inequalities” and arguing that “Women’s sport has chronically been devalued and dismissed, and often ignored entirely.”

It cited a 2021 University of Southern California/Purdue University study that found 80 per cent of televised sports news and highlight shows in the United States included “zip, zilch, nada” mention of female athletes.

Let’s set aside for a moment the reality that the Freep was a pot looking for a kettle to call black (its record on the female file is dismal; see below). Let’s deal strictly with the female/male across-the-board imbalance we see on our flatscreens, in our newspapers, online and on digital platforms.

Most studies tell us that females receive 4-6 per cent of overall sports coverage, although Waserman’s The Collective indicates a more accurate figure is 15 per cent.

Either way, the freshly minted PWHL is trudging uphill in a quest to stake out a plot on a sports media landscape divvied up mostly on the whims of men, many of whom have been brainwashed into believing female athletes are second-hand Roses best kept on the periphery, if not out of sight. (Unless, of course, some cleavage is showing, in which case the Postmedia tabloids will find ample room for a lede and sidebar, right beside the Sunshine Girl.)

It’s a tough haul for any new jock op to make a go of it, but more so on the distaff side of the playground where, as the aforementioned Free Press editorial accurately summarized, female athletes/teams have “chronically been devalued and dismissed, and often ignored entirely.”

So let’s be clear on one thing: The PWHL needs the sports media. It’s not the other way around.

The PWHL is like that new chew toy you bring home for your dog. Ol’ Yeller is keen to gnaw on the thing the first few days, but he soon loses interest and goes back to chewing the couch cushions. A lot of sports editors/directors are like Ol’ Yeller.

Put it another way: You can still buy a Cabbage Patch Kids doll today, but it isn’t the riotous bit of business we witnessed 40 years ago, when body armor was a requirement for any parent brave enough to face the toy store mobs in search of the ugly, little things. People actually suffered broken limbs in the chaos (true story). But who even talks about Cabbage Patch Kids these days?

Perhaps this first-week, widespread media embrace of the PWHL is a signal that attitudes are adjusting and that sports editors/directors won’t be quick to abandon this iteration of Ponytail Puck.

Maybe, just maybe, Ol’ Yeller has learned a new trick.

As mentioned above, an example of the great female/male divide in sports coverage can be found on the pages of the Free Press, or as I like to call it, the Drab Slab. As much as they talk a good game about their attention to female athletes/teams, they’re miserable slackers on the female file. Here are the numbers for articles/briefs exclusive to female and male sports for 2023:

Male: 3,892 M (324 per month ave.)
Female: 696 F (58 ave.)
Local female: 192 (16 ave.; average of 10 for the last nine months of 2023.)

Here’s something else: In seven of 12 months, half or more of the total e-editions contained 0 local female coverage. Yes, zero. As in “zip, zilch, nada.”

And yet they have the balls to talk about “ugly gender inequalities” and how female athletes have been “devalued and dismissed, and often ignored entirely.”

If they recognize it’s wrong, why the hell don’t they do something about it?

In the department of Things You Thought You’d Never Hear, I give you Daniella Ponticelli, play-by-play voice with the PWHL. After a late, third-period goal by Laura Stacey in Montreal’s OT win over Ottawa, an excited Ponticelli delivered this gem: “And how about that? First person she gets to hug, her teammate, her linemate Marie-Philip Poulin. Of course those two are engaged and it’s just an incredible moment to share.” It was also an incredible call by Ponticelli, who humanized the occasion by referencing the off-ice relationship between the two gay women. Loved it.

Just a thought: I don’t recall play-by-play pioneer Foster Hewitt ever describing a fiancé-fiancé goal during his time in the Gondola (Google it, kids).

Not so lovely are numerous juvenile comments online that make sport of the sexual orientation and/or question the gender of PWHL players. The specifics of the ugliness won’t be repeated here, but suffice to say some people truly need to get a life.

Count me surprised that the PWHL hasn’t mandated neck protection. Players are required to wear full cages to guard against facial owies, but they’re one skate blade away from a ghastly neck wound (or worse). Doesn’t make sense.

If you’re scoring at home, the eye-popping 13,316 head count for the PWHL Montreal-Minnesota do-si-do at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul on Saturday was a better number than 12 of Winnipeg Jets home dates this season. It tops the average attendance at the Little Hockey House On The Prairie. But, hey, no one wants to watch Ponytail Puck, right?

Again, if you’re scoring at home, women take care of business quicker than the men: All five PWHL skirmishes in the past week were less than 2 1/2 hours from faceoff to final buzzer, whereas nine of last night’s 12 NHL games took more than 2 1/2 hours to complete. The difference isn’t great, but it gives fans at an NHL game ample time for an extra beer run.

A brief comment about the actual PWHL on-ice product: There aren’t enough players with a shoot-first mentality. So many in prime scoring position, so many dumb passes. Shoot the puck, ladies.

There’s been much chatter about the Jennifer Botterill-Jamal Mayers-Sam Cosentino natter the other night on Sportsnet, whereby the trio discussed the merits of the men’s hockey “code,” which, albeit unwritten, is a twisted version of the golden rule and states one must do unto others what others have done to you. In other words, poke out a foe’s eye if said foe has already plucked out a teammate’s eye.

Naturally, Mayers and Cosentino threw in with all advocates of goon hockey, saying two-handed head-bashing with a club is an admirable bit of business to be celebrated rather than scorned. They sounded as dopey as they looked, especially Mayers.

Botterill, meanwhile, pooh-poohed that caveman mentality, shrieking that “it is archaic” and submitting “there’s a difference between tough and physical and cheap and dirty.”

No surprise that many keyboard warriors were quick to pounce on Botterill, insisting that the great Olympic champion has no business opining on such matters because she never played in the NHL.

Well, I’ve got news for you keyboard warriors: Neither did you.

Interesting tweet from Murat Ates of The Athletic: “I can’t speak for any other sports reporter but, for me, the idea of being a perfectly objective robot about the team I cover is a myth.” Amen to that, Murat. I’ve been there and done that, and I can confess that I wanted the 1979 Winnipeg Jets to win, I wanted the 1973 Portage Terriers to win, I wanted Donny Lalonde to knock Sugar Ray Leonard’s block off, but I tried not to let my rooting interest creep into my copy. Were I still in the rag trade, I’d be cheering like hell for the PWHL to succeed. Harboring an unspoken rooting interest for the athletes/teams you cover isn’t a flaw. It’s being human. Back in my day, us beat writers were part of the travelling party, riding on the team bus and often sitting beside them on team flights, which were commercial. I once had American Thanksgiving dinner with Pat Stapleton and his family, at their home, when he coached the Indianapolis Racers. What, I’m not supposed to root for him?

It wasn’t shocking that Connor McDavid scored five points in a game last week. It’s shocking that the Edmonton Oilers captain did it in just 16 minutes and 35 seconds on the freeze. Four forwards and five defencemen had more ice time.

So, the Hamilton Tabbies have performed a nip-and-tuck on brittle quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell’s contract, reducing the bottom line from $522,000 in salary to $225,000 and a $50,000 signing bonus plus incentives. That’s good pay for a guy who’ll spend 2/3 of the Rouge Football season in the infirmary.

My first thought when I heard the Edmonton Elks had signed McLeod Bethel-Thompson to play QB in the 2024 crusade? Is it April 1?

And, finally, apparently a teenage boy in Oklahoma, Willis Gibson, became the first human to beat Tetris. I’d say I’m impressed, but first someone will have to tell me what Tetris is.

Once the PWHL gets past the loud, nasty noise, it will swim or sink on merit

We can assume that Mark and Kimbra Walter knew what they signed up for when they staged their bloodless coup and gained absolute control of the female hockey fiefdom at the back end of June.

I mean, it’s not like they’re novices at bankrolling sports franchises, because their portfolio includes one of Major League Baseball’s most-storied outfits, the Los Angeles Dodgers, futbol’s Chelsea FC of the English Premier League, and female hoopsters the L.A. Sparks.

They also own a wildlife preserve in Florida, and they’re zookeepers (Lincoln Park Zoo) which, one supposes, might be beneficial when dealing with professional athletes.

Meantime, Mark and Kimbra aligned themselves with similar been-there, done-that accomplices in the overthrow of the Premier Hockey Federation, and their freshly minted Professional Women’s Hockey League is top heavy with know-how—Stan Kasten, whose hand has been at the wheel of three MLB clubs and he has the World Series rings to prove it, and the gay power couple, tennis legend Billie Jean King and wife Ilana Kloss.

So there’s little, if anything, that these people haven’t heard, especially King and Kloss because the rabble is seldom shy about reminding gay people that they’re the spawn of Satan.

Still, when the freshly minted Poohbahs of Ponytail Puck introduced the general managers of their six franchises and revealed the order for shoutouts at the inaugural player draft on Sept. 18, there was an outpouring of sexism, misogyny, transphobia, ignorance, adolescent smarm and a healthy dose of doomsdayism.

Here are sample comments from the peanut gallery on the Sportsnet website:

“Will the first person chosen be non binary or otherwise?”

“I’m actually thinking about selling tickets so people can watch me sleep.”

“And with the first pick Minnesota picks Lia Thomas. They’ll teach him to skate.”

“I can hear it now…with the first overall pick…Minnesota selects…William Nylander.”

“Hope Bruce Jenner and the Kardashians get drafted, just think of the box office appeal. Sellouts would be common. Heck, I would even buy tickets when they are in town.”

“I would take the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena late in the draft, easy to transition from tennis to hockey. A couple of power forwards in the making with the proper coaching.”

“I heard the Hansons, Ogie Ogilthorpe, Tim ‘Dr. Hook’ McCracken, André ‘Poodle’ Lussier, Ross ‘Mad Dog’ Madison, and Gilmore Tuttle are all going to do the ‘change’ and play in the PWHL.”

“LFL, Lingerie Football League is the one to watch.”

“It’s doomed because very few care about professional women’s hockey.”

“Hasn’t folded yet?”

“How long before the women demand to be paid the same as NHL players? Social justice.”

“Will each team have a quota of a maximum of 3 former (born) males per team, like some leagues (CFL) that have quotas?”

Etcetera, etcetera.

True, it’s nothing but noise (abhorrent noise), but I remember the World Hockey Association startup in November 1971 and I don’t recall the doubters straying so far off-topic with cheesy claptrap about gender and reality TV ninnies.

Oh, sure, there was scoffing and rude laughter aplenty (I confess, I’m guilty) when the WHA carnival barkers announced a 10-franchise operation, stretching from Miami to San Francisco and as far north as Edmonton. I mean, there had never been a pie in the sky that big. A bunch of yahoos (apologies to Benny Hatskin) were prepared to kick sand at the mighty National Hockey League? It was David vs. Goliath, except this time David only had a handful of confetti to try and slay the giant, not a slingshot and a rock. The over/under on WHA life expectancy was about a week and a half.

The thing is, criticism of the WHA and its predicted doom was confined to lack of on-ice talent and the imposing competition.

The PWHL has no such impediments.

Now that women’s hockey is a one-trick pony, the planet’s finest female talent is available for the plucking and it’s the only game in town (six towns to be precise—Montreal, Ottawa, the Republic of Tranna, New York, Boston, Minneapolis/St. Paul).

That, in turn, should prompt an exchange of logical talking points, not bottom-feeder banter from people who’ve spent too much time alone and don’t know how to behave in mixed company.

But that’s what the Poohbahs of Ponytail Puck are up against as they attempt to succeed where the Canadian Women’s Hockey League failed in 2019.

Some suggest the Premier Hockey Federation also failed, but that isn’t so.

The PHF was cruising toward an eighth season, with jacked-up salaries, better benefits and improved off-ice facilities, when the Walters group came along in June and the PHF was swallowed whole—lock, stock and ponytails—by folks who know how to turn one dollar into two dollars.

The fear, of course, is that they’ll be turning two dollars into one dollar with this PWHL venture.

Many of us have long wondered about the market for Ponytail Puck. What is it? Who is it? Where is it? Is there a there there?

Since the CWHL shut its doors in 2019, it’s been a colossal mess, with the PHF and members of the Dream Gap Tour squawking like teenagers squabbling over who’s going to wear what to the prom. The feud sometimes turned ugly, featuring spicy trash talk of a “glorified beer league” and harsh criticism of PHF founder Dani Rylan Kearney.

Meantime, mainstream media, which basically ignored the CWHL out of business, wasn’t doing the PHF or Dream Gappers any favors. Coverage of either group was as scarce as a Stanley Cup parade in Canada.

There’s also the very significant matter of credibility in the eyes of the rabble.

The astute observer will know that our Canadian Women’s National Hockey Team has used teenage boys to prep for Olympic Games, and the results have not been flattering. In friendlies vs. Junior A sides from Alberta, British Columbia and U17 boys from across the country in late 2021, the CWNHT went 0-9 and was outscored 52-9.

Meanwhile, the Dream Gap All-Stars had 11 friendlies vs. teens from the United States Premier Hockey League in early 2021 and went 8-3.

If the finest female pucksters on the planet can’t beat teenage boys, how saleable is the product, right?

Well, the United States Women’s National Soccer Team once lost to a team of teenage boys, yet the NWSL has an average head count of 9,556 league-wide this year, and individual sides average anywhere from 4,033 and 19,690 customers.

If it works for soccer, surely it can work for shinny.

We’ll know soon enough, because the Walter group drops the puck in January, and I’m guessing there’s a healthy appetite for a league that features the elite of the elite female players (give or take a few Europeans).

And the number of gay or non-binary or transgender coaches/players won’t have any bearing on the buy-in from fans or news snoops. I mean, that’s just stupid.

Let’s talk about the real reason mainstream media chooses to treat female athletes like second-hand Roses…Coach Grunge…racing escargot…pigging out on tube steaks…the Coup de Shinny…and other things on my mind

One need not search long or hard on social media to find offensive commentary as it relates to female athletes and sports. Misogyny is as common as prayer in a church.

It is, in fact, the reason I ceased interacting on Twitter.

Kate Beirness with the boys…Davis Sanchez, Paul LaPolice, Matt Dunigan, Milt Stegall.

After I had mentioned the CFL on TSN football panel in a tweet last August, a reader responded with disgusting, degrading and sexist bile about host Kate Beirness, who does boffo work attempting to harness the egos of the “experts” sitting beside her in the studio.

I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice to say it was gross and, although I know Kate only via my flatscreen, I wasn’t prepared to allow a character assassination on my feed. Thus, I deleted the crude comment and have since refrained from engaging in banter on Elon Musk’s play thing.

But what about sexism in mainstream media?

There are different levels of discrimination based on gender, like the extreme, gawdawful examples we easily find on social media, whereby female athletes are reminded that they belong in the kitchen or barefoot in the bedroom. Or it can be the subtle sexism that we find in our newspapers and on our air every day.

Damien Cox tapped into that very thing in a recent essay for the Toronto Star, noting the ocean-wide gap between coverage of the recent goings-on in the National Hockey League and glad tidings of a women’s super league. Between the NHL Entry Draft, the swapping of sweaters and Free Agent Frenzy, an entire forest worth of newsprint was required to accommodate daily dispatches on the men, whereas the biggest story in the history of Ponytail Puck was limited to “oh, by the way” acknowledgment.

“Do we know why this patriarchy still exists?” Cox asked. “Of course we do. It’s about money, and it’s about the way in which women’s pro sports have long been perceived in the North American sports culture.”

Cox also submitted this gem about coverage of male/female sports: “It certainly seems acutely unbalanced”

Yikes! It seems unbalanced?

That’s like saying Donald Trump’s legal team seems to have a lot on its plate these days.

I mean, numerous studies tell us that female sports receives less than 10 per cent of print/air time and, in the 30 years from 1989 to 2019, the needle didn’t move in a favorable direction for the women on TV.

“News organizations spend a lot of money researching what their customers are interested in,” Cox writes. “The clicks tell all.”

No. They don’t. Neither does money.

There’s one basic reason why female athletes don’t sit at the big table and eat with the grownups—mainstream sports media chooses to keep them at the kids’ table.

Too many editors remain locked into the horse-and-buggy thinking of the 20th century, a time when a female athlete was oft looked upon as freakish and sports writers weren’t shy about reminding them of their “proper place.”

For example, this is what Joe Williams of the New York World-Telegram wrote about Olympic and golf champion Babe Didrikson Zaharias, aka the Texas Tomboy: “It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring.”

Williams also had this to say about Babe’s skill level: “The same year she became the greatest woman athlete in history, a comparative chart showed that she had not equaled one record made by a masculine high school champion of the same period. If the best woman athlete in the country is not as good as some gawky kid in high school, why waste the effort, why invite the embarrassment of mediocrity, why—well, why not get a seat in the stands and make the big male blokes out there on the cinder track believe you are nuts about them?”

Does that sound familiar? Sure does. We hear the same refrain today about the Canadian and American national soccer and shinny sides—they can’t beat teenage boys, so they’re either ignored or banished to the back pages of newspapers and the back half of sports highlight shows.

But, again, someone makes the choice to designate female athletes as back-page material. And that someone is most likely male.

Results from a study of 100 newspapers and websites by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) in 2021 showed the following:

Only 16.7% of sports editors were female.
Only 24.2% of assistant sports editors were female.
Only 19.3% of sports staffs were female.
Only 17.8% of sports columnists were female.
Only 14.4% or sports reporters were female.
Only 24.7% of copy editors/page designers were female.

If we use Good Ol’ Hometown as an e.g., we find that neither the Winnipeg Sun nor the Winnipeg Free Press has a female sports scribe or editor on staff. Zero.

The tabloid’s coverage of women is basically non-existent, while the broadsheet’s record on the female file is a study in neglect, most notably as it relates to local athletes. Although the Sun has ceded the female field to the Drab Slab, the Freep has delivered just 126 articles/briefs exclusive to local female sports in the opening half of 2023. That’s an average of 21 per month. Since the curling season ended, the average is 10 per month. Or one article/brief every third day.

Overall, the Freep published 2,143 articles/briefs exclusive to male athletes January through June, compared to just 394 on women (monthly average: 357-65).

Again, this isn’t down to market research, money or Internet clicks. It’s down to choice.

Every day in every newsroom there’s an editor making the call on copy—what stories to run, what goes on the sports front and what’s relegated to the inside pages. Ideally, they do so based on the significance and/or quality of an article, except the significance and/or quality is often devalued by an antiquated, prevailing and built-in gender bias that too often comes into play. Thus, editors and their scribes choose not to chase down good stories on female athletes.

Perhaps it’s become a subconscious thing, but it’s very real, and it’s the North America norm.

Damien Cox is absolutely correct when he suggests coverage of NHL affairs vs. the landmark news in women’s hockey is “a snapshot of where we are as a sports media culture.”

The avenue to changing that isn’t necessarily getting more women involved in sports media, although that would be a refreshing development. It’s getting the men in sports media to change their outdated perceptions. An attitude adjustment, if you will.

You know, time was when the most stinging insult on the playground was one boy telling another lad “You throw like a girl” or “You run like a girl.” It was the go-to put-down that no boy yearned to hear (trash talk before it was called trash talk). Yet that’s exactly what mainstream sports media is saying in its allotment of space/time to female athletes: “We won’t waste time and space on them because the throw and run like girls.”

While it’s true that Connor McDavid can skate circles around Marie-Philip Poulin, that doesn’t mean editors and writers should reduce her to an after-thought or, worse, ignore her. There’s considerable value in what she does, and the same must be said for a lengthy roster of female athletes, from the sandlots to the citadels of sports.

All female athletes have a tale to tell and they aren’t hard to find. Perhaps editors/scribes are too lazy or too indifferent to go after them, but I say it’s because they’re too entrenched in 20th-century twaddle.

That isn’t just sad, it’s malpractice.

It’s interesting that Cox would wax on about the discrepancy in male/female coverage, because just last October this headline appeared in the Toronto Star, above a column by Donovan Vincent, the paper’s Public Editor: “Women still under-represented in Star’s sports coverage.” Has anything changed in the ensuing eight months? Well, there was a sports front piece on teenage girl skateboarder and Olympic hopeful Fay De Fazio Ebert in Saturday’s edition, and it was written by a female scribe, Kerry Gillespie, so that’s encouraging. Like I said, the stories are there. All it takes is an editor and/or writer who chooses to tell the tale, and all those almighty Internet clicks be damned.

Mike O’Shea had no business coaching the Winnipeg Blue Bombers after his first two whirls as sideline steward. The guy was 12-24 and couldn’t have been less popular if he’d put on a Saskatchewan Roughriders jersey, swilled cans of Pilsner and led a Gang Green rally before the Banjo Bowl. Townfolk embraced him the way they do spring flooding. But just look at Coach Grunge now. Winnipeg FC’s 24-11 success over the Calgary Stampeders on Friday night was his 86th regular season W, putting him in lockstep with legend Cal Murphy and 16 in arrears of legend Bud Grant. Add to that two Grey Cup championships, plus twin Canadian Football League coach-of-the-year salutes, and it places him in pigeon perch territory. Oh, yes, like both Murphy and Grant, there shall be a statue of O’Shea outside the Football Field In Fort Garry one day, although they’ll have to put the sculptor on hold since Coach Grunge has no plans to skip town anytime soon. And if they do it right, he’ll be chiseled in short pants, a t-shirt and a tattered ball cap.

Jim Barker was correct: The Bombers-Stamps skirmish was a “slobber-knocker.” Or, as old friend young Eddie Tait would say, “snot bubbles” were the order of the day. When Vince Lombardi called football a “collision” sport, this is what he was talking about. The lads put on their big-boy pants and really had at it. It was a demolition derby in cleats.

So sad to see what’s become of the Edmonton Elks, the one-time flagship franchise of Rouge Football. I’m not sure the Elks still have a pulse, with zero Ws this season (0-5), zero Ws on home soil since October 2019 and more empty seats than a canceled Taylor Swift concert. The great mystery isn’t when they’ll finally win again at Commonwealth Stadium, it’s will head coach Chris Jones will be on the sideline when it happens.

I don’t know about you, but I liked the Toronto Argos better when they wore Double Blue unis, not the robin eggshell togs they’re sporting this season.

Who’s responsible for the 2023 Rouge Football schedule? We’re only a month in and the Argos are already on their second bye week. Not that anyone in the Republic of Tranna will notice. The Boatman attracted just 12,473 of 8 million locals to their last frolic at BMO Field. And, to think, they won the Grey Grail just seven months ago. Pitiful, just pitiful.

Bet you didn’t know that the Snail Racing World Championship was held Saturday at the Grimston Cricket Club in Congham, England. True story. The snails slow-poke their way to the finish line in a 13-inch race, and the world record for snail-level lickety-split is two minutes flat, established in 1995 by Archie, thereafter known as the Escargot Express. No word on whether or not Archie was last seen as an appetizer on a Frenchman’s dinner plate.

That mention of escargot brings to mind one of my favourite all-time sports quotes, from former Major League Baseball player and coach Rocky Bridges, who, when asked why he refused to eat snails, said: “I prefer fast foods.”

On the subject of edibles, no surprise that the king of gluttony, Joey Chestnut, successfully defended his Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog pigout title after a lengthy rain delay last week on Coney Island. But Joey was off his game in retaining the coveted Mustard Belt, scarfing down just 62 tube steaks in 10 minutes, well off his personal best of 76. Just wondering: How many snails do you suppose Joey could inhale in 10 minutes?

Not impressed with the Chestnut tube steak chow-down was ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith. “It’s nasty as shit,” Smith said. “His significant other does not want to be around him for the next few days. It’s gonna be a lot of gas passed. It’s a lot of gas. I know ’cause I don’t eat hot dogs like that and I pass gas sometimes. Stay away from me. I don’t want to meet you. You might burp and I might smell it from a mile away. I don’t need that in my life. No, no, no.” And, hey, if anyone ought to know about gasbags, it’s Stephen A.

Observations through week one of Wimbledon: Our guy Milos Raonic plays like he’s bored out of his mind, and another one of our guys, Denis Shapovalov, might be the biggest crybaby on the men’s side.

The Premier Hockey Federation had 121 players under contract for a season that will never happen now that Mark and Kimbra Walter have bought women’s hockey lock, stock and ponytail, and I’m still waiting for the other skate to drop. I mean, surely some PHFers are royally PO’d, knowing they’ll never draw another paycheque through no fault of their own, and I can’t believe they’re prepared to slink away without a squawk. Once the Walters, Stan Kasten and Billie Jean King reveal the details of their successful Coup de Shinny, I have a suspicion we’ll finally hear some fallout and the voices will be loud.

And, finally, when did Marc Liegghio get a bionic leg? I mean, seven months ago he couldn’t kick a can on the street let alone a football, and it cost the Bombers a third successive Grey Cup title. Yet there he was on Saturday night hoofing five field goals to push the Hamilton Tabbies past the Bytown RedBlacks. Go figure.

Let’s talk about the Summer of Chevy (so far)…Kenny & Renny telling it like it is…peace in Ponytail Puck…an unfunny man at the NHL awards gala…and ball fans going hog wild in Georgia…

Top o’ the morning to you, Kevin Cheveldayoff.

Geez, Chevy, where do we begin? With the Pierre-Luc Dubois trade? The Blake Wheeler buyout? The National Hockey League Entry Draft? Free agent frenzy?

I swear, you’ve had a busier week than a bartender at last call, and I’ve gotta tell you, if you get one more pat on the back in the next 24 hours you’ll have to spend the remainder of the Summer of Chevy in traction. At the cottage, of course.

I mean, by most accounts you turned a sow’s ear into a silk purse last week with your sleight of hand at the annual NHL off-season festival down there in Twang Town, and it’s been “atta boy, Chevy” ever since.

Little wonder, though, because you generally managed to pry three live bodies and a draft choice away from the Los Angeles Kings last Tuesday, and all it cost your Winnipeg Jets was Dubois, who certainly didn’t let the door smack him on the ass on his way out of Good Ol’ Hometown.

Dubois ran to Tinseltown faster than a scalded dog, and he promptly put his John Hancock on an eight-year agreement that averages out to $8.5 million per.

The big forward wasn’t prepared to spend eight more minutes in Good Ol’ Hometown, let alone eight years, so you and Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman made the best of a bad hand. And I say good riddance, because you’ll never convince me that a 63-point player merits that kind of coin, and I’m guessing neither of you boys will lose a wink of shuteye fretting because Dubois calls Hollywood and Vine home now instead of Portage and Main.

As a quick aside, Chevy, don’t you think the name Dubois might have possibilities in La La Land. Think about it: The House of Dubois. Sounds like a fancy shmancy night spot where only the beautiful people get past the large men posted outside the front door. Or an exclusive, by-invitation-only clothier where the glam crowd goes to purchase their finery for an evening at the Oscars. Why, just saying “The House of Dubois” reeks of high-class, turned-up-snout snootiness.

By contrast, a place called The House of Dubois in Winnipeg would be a deli next door to a 7-Eleven.

Anyway, Chevy, you and the Puck Pontiff have wiped Dubois off the Jets’ to-do plate, and I hope you recognize the lesson to be learned. That is, you can’t keep recruiting guys who regard playing in Good Ol’ Hometown as a hostage-taking. Do your homework, for gawd’s sake.

Toward that end, I trust your forensics people performed CSIS-level background checks on the newest kids in town—Gabriel Vilardi, Alex Iafallo and Rasmus Kupari—and found no allergies to snow, potholes and bad WiFi among the now-former Kings. Otherwise it’ll be same old, same old, whereby one or more of them will follow Evander Kane, Jacob Trouba, Patrik Laine, Jack Roslovic, Andrew Copp and Dubois out of Dodge. Heck, we can add Dustin Byfuglien to that group of escapees, although Big Buff has never explained his beef with the club. We know it couldn’t have been the weather, because fishing, even in an ice hut, is his jam, so we still wonder why he took a walk and never looked back.

All those guys skipping town might not be an exodus on a biblical scale, Chevy, but it’s not just a couple of kids playing hooky, either.

Speaking of kids, it looks like you landed yourself a good one in Colby Barlow, your first shoutout at the auction of teenage talent in Nashville. Rumor has it he grew his first playoff beard at age 7 and, after seeing him on my flatscreen the other night, I can believe it. I mean, Pittsburgh Penguins GM Kyle Dubas looks like his little brother.

And I must say, Chevy, that’s quite a stockpile of brainiacs you and your bird dogs have collected. Cole Perfetti, Adam Lowry and Josh Morrissey were scholastic player-of-the-year winners in Junior hockey, and now Barlow and Connor Levis, your fifth pick at the Entry Draf in Nashville, join that group. So many smart players. Now if you can only get rid of the smart asses in the room.

Hopefully you’ll have fewer malcontents in that room come autumn, Chevy, and you took a turn in that direction with the adios to former Captain Cranky Pants, Wheeler.

I’m actually mildly surprised that you and the Puck Pontiff freed Wheeler. I didn’t think you boys had the brass monkeys to go that route, because you tied your wagon to him in 2018 and gave him the run of the room. He was still the lead alpha dog among the alpha dogs in the most recent crusade, even without the ‘C’ stitched on his jersey, and he delivered the loudest bark at head coach Rick Bowness during the players’ whiny, post-season pity party. So the guy had to go, even if it means co-bankrolls Chipper and the 3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet will be paying him $2.75 million not to wear Jets linen the next two crusades.

No doubt the split with Wheeler tugged hard on the heart strings, but, frankly Chevy, it came two seasons too late and I think you know it. Ditto the Puck Pontiff.

Hey, I understand your loyalty to a guy who rolled into Good Ol’ Hometown with the Atlanta caravan in 2011, but I figure if the Beatles can break up during the Get Back sessions, it shouldn’t be so difficult to part company with a hockey player whose best-before date has expired.

Naturally you, also many others, had some parting hosannas for Wheeler, and that’s understandable. But you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t join the warm-and-fuzzy chorus. Unless I hear evidence to the contrary, I’ll go to my urn convinced that he cost you Patrik Laine (with Paul Maurice and Rink Rat Scheifele as his accomplices), and I didn’t fancy his oft-acidic natters with news snoops.

Truthfully, the former captain came across as a boor, a bitter man, and I suspect your Jets are well shed of him.

But here’s the concern, Chevy: Wheeler will leave residue, some of it good, some of it rancid. Your task, also Bowness’, is to make certain that only the good clings to the holdovers in the changing room. Failing that, you’re destined for another crusade that ends in a whiny pity party next spring.

I know you’re trying, Chevy, but I just don’t know who you’re trying to be. I mean, it’s out with the old, Wheeler, and in with the old, Vlad Namestnikov and Laurent Brossoit.

Now, I don’t think any among the rabble expected ultra-glad tidings from the first day of free agent frenzy, because selling Good Ol’ Hometown to young, millionaire NHL players is like trying to convince a teenager to go a week without their smartphone, but Namestnikov and Brossoit? Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

I assume you aren’t done, Chevy. You can’t be done. You can’t be telling us that Wheeler and Dubois were the only rot on your roster and that three refugees from Los Angeles will make everything right.

If that’s your message to the masses, good luck with it.

Enjoy your summer, Chevy.

If it’s no-punches-pulled commentary that you’re looking for, check out the Kenny and Renny Show. The natter between Sportsnet’s Ken Wiebe and Sean Reynolds on Wheeler is fascinating, frank and spirited. Here’s a small sampling of their gum-flapper…

Reynolds: “There was no bringing Blake Wheeler back into this room. Blake Wheeler isn’t being bought out because he’s not a productive player. When he came out and talked about Rick Bowness the way he did at the year-end press conference, that was someone saying ‘I’m not gonna be back in this room so I’m gonna say whatever the heck I want to.’ I don’t think Blake Wheeler was fighting to stick around. You’re not gonna see any fingernail marks on the jambs of the door that Wheeler left behind on the way out of here. I think he was more than happy to move on.”

Wiebe: “We’re not gonna pretend that this is the way the Jets or Blake Wheeler wanted his tenure to end. There’s no way either side wanted it to end this way. I applaud both sides for putting on a happy face and trying to do this as easy as possible, and I think all sides are being genuine in their commentary, but that’s not to say it’s a smooth thing for either side. I mean, of course Blake Wheeler didn’t want to be bought out. By the end did he want a change of scenery? Yes. Knowing Blake after covering him for 12 years, he will be carrying around an enormous chip on his shoulder. He’s definitely going to try and prove to the Winnipeg Jets that they made a mistake. It was time for a new direction. Blake Wheeler will be thanked for his contributions, his number 26 will go to the rafters one day, he will be celebrated when he returns, but it was time for both sides to move along.”

That’s good talk.

The aforementioned Pierre-Luc Dubois deal is, of course, a branch of the Patrik Laine trade tree, whereby the Jets sent Puck Finn to Columbus in barter for Dubois in 2021. This is how that transaction shakes down today: Laine/Jack Roslovic in exchange for Daniel Zhilkin, Gabriel Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari and a 2024 second-round draft choice.

A couple of observations after watching the Free Agent Frenzy marathon yesterday on TSN: 1) Shocking that James Duthie and his cast-o-plenty managed to squeeze in a mention or two of the Toronto Maple Leafs (yes, that’s sarcasm, kids); 2) hair is really important to most women I know, so what is Cheryl Pounder thinking?

Interesting times in Ponytail Puck, with the Mark Walter Group and Billie Jean King Enterprises bullying the Premier Hockey Federation out of business by buying it out of business, and why do I get the feeling it’s about to get nasty? I mean, they’ve already voided all PHF contracts, some of them in six figures, and it’s a guarantee that one or two (more?) of its seven franchises will disappear. Also, between the PHF and the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association there are 200-plus players, many of whom will be discarded. You think that won’t lead to bitterness and anger? But, hey, those of us who pay attention to Ponytail Puck have yearned for one super league, and Billie Jean King is finally putting her money where her yap is. Question is, will the rabble buy it? At the get-go, probably. Over the long haul, iffy. PHF games and the PWHPA’s glorified scrimmages weren’t big sellers, and they were largely ignored by mainstream media. More to the point, squabbling among the women attracted more attention than what they did on the freeze. No doubt there’s a market for elite Ponytail Puck, but no one knows if it’s the size of an elephant’s ears or a house fly’s ears. Stay tuned.

I’m curious: Why was Paul Bissonnette on stage at the NHL awards show in Nashville last week? If his presence was meant to provide yuks, he failed miserably, unless you consider plopping a tiara on Linus Ullmark’s head a knee-slapping moment of high comedy. Oh, and passing Connor Bedard a silly kiddie’s cowboy hat? More belly laughs? Not! Biz Nasty was incredibly unfunny. His cave-dweller shtick was lame, like a lost dog with three legs. Grade him at a George Costanza level of obnoxious on your scorecard at home, y’all.

I wondered if Jim Montgomery would mention his battle with booze in accepting his trinket as NHL coach-of-the-year. Yup, he did. And good for Jim. Here’s hoping the Boston Bruins bench jockey struck a chord with someone caught in a similar struggle.

Country music fan here, with questions: They stage a grand gala in Twang Town, home of the Grand Ole Opry, and the Brothers Osborne and Mitchell Tenpenny are the best entertainment the NHL can buy? And who were those other performers at the awards show? Anybody outside Nashville ever heard of them? Sigh. Maybe it’s an age thing, but I do believe George Strait and Alan Jackson were right when they sang “someone killed country music” at the 1999 CMA awards.

Thankfully, the NHL upped its game for the Entry Draft, with Jo Dee Messina on stage. Jo Dee sounds like country music.

And, finally, remember the kids’ nursery rhyme This Little Piggy, where a little piggy went “wee, wee, wee all the way home?” Well, they have a different slant on it down there in Georgia, where the Macon Bacon play baseball in the Coastal Plain League. It’s more like “this little piggy goes wee, wee, wee all the way to barbecue pit,” because fans are hog wild (pun intended) for the menu at Luther Williams Field. They can pig out (pun intended) on tasty items like bacon-wrapped bacon, bacon-loaded mac and cheese, bacon chips, steak-cut bacon, fries with cheese and bacon, and there’s some pulled pork on the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon sandwich. And, hey, they can scarf it down in the Bacon Box or the Bacon and Kegs Beer Garden. Even team mascot Kevin (named after actor Kevin Bacon) is a slab of swine. And it’s all too much for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which believes all the piggyness “sends the wrong message to fans.” Thus they insist on a name change that promotes healthier eating habits, like Macon Facon Bacon. Not going to happen, though, in part because fans named the team. “Macon Bacon will be sizzling forever and will not consider a name change, ever,” says team president Brandon Raphael. So, in the immortal words of Porky Pig, “that’s all, folks!”

Let’s talk about Commish Gary and the team formerly known as Jets 1.0…Arrrr! Ron MacLean talking about a scurvy dog…a six-pee OT…fantasy GMs…survey says!…Aaron Judge’s sideways glance…take me out to the ball game and bring the defibrillator…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Gary Bettman.

Well, looks like there’s not much fight left in your desert dogs, although I’m sure there’s still some fight left in you.

If we know anything about you, Gary, it’s that you’ve got a stubborn streak as wide as the Grand Canyon and as long as the Gila River, and you won’t give up on the Arizona Coyotes until there’s no more cacti in the Sonoran Desert.

But the good people of Tempe have given up on the Yotes, turning thumbs down to a proposal for a fancy schmancy entertainment district that would have featured a swanky, new barn for everyone’s favorite National Hockey League punch line.

So what’s your next move, Gary? You’re the NHL commissioner. Are you prepared to let Coyotes ownership cry uncle and flee the desert, or do you want to throw another dart at a map of Arizona and find another loser home for your skating vagabonds? You’ve already tried Phoenix and Glendale and Tempe. I swear, you’ve covered more ground in Arizona than Geronimo. So how about Yuma? Casa Grande? Flagstaff? Tombstone?

Hey, maybe that’s the ticket, Commish Gary. You can have them set up shop in Tombstone, next door to the OK Corral. You can track down one of Wyatt Earp’s ancestors and have him drive the Zamboni. You can reenact the shootout between the Earp brothers/Doc Holliday and the Clantin and McLaury boys during intermission. That was 30 seconds of bullets flying but mostly missing the target, kind of like the Winnipeg Jets offence.

Now that I’ve mentioned the Jets, Gary, I probably don’t have to remind you that you still wear the black hat in Good Ol’ Hometown.

Oh, yes, many among the rabble remain properly PO’d because you allowed their beloved hockey team to skip town and pitch tent in Arizona in 1996. Since then they’ve watched you grant the Coyotes more second chances than a Catholic in a confessional, and they don’t understand why you failed to show the same heels-dug-in zeal for Winnipeg. Not even the arrival of Jets 2.0 in 2011 soothed all souls. You’re the bad guy. Forever.

I don’t share their anger, Gary. At least not totally.

I remember what it was like back in the day when little, old ladies were signing their pension cheques over to Save the Jets funds and, at the same time, school urchins were busting up piggy banks and donating their nickels and dimes in the hope of keeping Keith Tkachuk and Teppo Numminen in town.

I also remember that the Ol’ Barn On Maroons Road was as shabby as a playoff beard, the Canadian dollar was worth about 15 cents US, and Barry Shenkarow couldn’t find any local business tycoons willing to pony up and take a lost cause off his hands.

What choice did you have, Gary, except to help orchestrate a sale to outside interests who believed there was more appetite for hockey in the Arizona desert than hockey on Our Frozen Tundra? I understood, but was it necessary to cackle like a nincompoop while the moving vans rolled out of River City. That was harsh, man. Bad optics. And it’s the reason you’re a pariah in Pegtown.

Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking now, Commish: You can do the right thing and end the buffoonery, but you won’t. You’ll continue to permit the Coyotes to frolic in rinky-dink Mulletthead Arena, a college rink that accommodates fewer than 5,000 customers, and you’ll turn over every desert stone in search of a new Arizona home before you tap out.

In the final reckoning, though, you’ll cry uncle. You’ll convince team bankroll Alex Meruelo that there are more suitable locales for your vagabonds.

All the usual suspects have been mentioned, Gary—Houston, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Atlanta (seriously?), Southern Ontario and, of course, Quebec City, which has the kind of rink you were looking for in Tempe. But I think we all know you aren’t interested in a Ville de Quebec redo and we know the reason why—too close to the North Pole.

You know, once upon a time a return of the Yotes to Good Ol’ Hometown was a romantic notion, and we’re told it almost came to be before Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and Jets co-bankroll David Thomson settled on Door No. 2 in 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers. It would have been poetic.

Alas, it’s all part of the “what if?” lore of the Jets-Coyotes franchise, and we’re left to wonder where the lineage goes from here.

I just hope you find a proper zip/postal code for the Coyotes, Gary.

Oh, there’s one more thing: For gawd’s sake, get them a rink that isn’t named after a bad haircut.

I lowered my eyelids long before Matthew Tkachuk’s 4OT goal in Game 1 of the Florida Panthers-Carolina Hurricanes Stanley Cup skirmish the other night, but I understand Ron MacLean spent part of one intermission talking about Blackbeard and pirates. Sigh. Apparently his history lesson tonight will be Circus Clowns: Weary Willie’s Influence On Don Cherry’s Wardrobe.

When I was a kid, I thought OT games sucked because I wasn’t allowed to stay up late and watch. Now I think OT games are boffo because I’m in bed long before Ron MacLean starts talking about pirates.

How long was the Game 1 Florida-Carolina overtime? Well, by the time Tkachuk scored the winning goal, I’d woken up six times to take a pee.

You know we’re fully into the silly season when news snoops are playing pretend GM and proposing trades that are about as likely as finding Wayne Gretzky’s rookie card in a Crackerjack box.

Take Kevin McGran of the Toronto Star, as an e.g. He figures it would be a swell idea for the Jets to ship Connor Hellebuyck, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Twig Ehlers to The Republic of Tranna for Mitch Marner and Ilya Samsonov.

“Hellebuyck is a Vezina-worthy goalie who could teach Joseph Woll a lot, while Dubois—a restricted free agent with arbitration right —is the closest player to Matthew Tkachuk on the trade market,” he fanticizes. “The risk for the Leafs is extensive. Hellebuyck ($6.166 million) has one year left on his deal and Dubois is an RFA hoping for a trade to the Montreal Canadiens. If not, he’ll sign there as an unrestricted free agent in 2024-25. So they’d be loading up for one year only, although Ehlers—drafted one spot behind Nylander—is the long-term play. The Jets are looking not so much to rebuild but to recalibrate. Samsonov is a restricted free agent who can be a No. 1 goalie. Getting him to sign an extension with the Jets would be the only way this works. The Jets might also look for one or two NHL-quality young players who are far from unrestricted free agency. Think Timothy Liljegren or Pontus Holmberg.”

Hey, I get it. Speculation can be a fun part of the jock journo gig. It gets tongues flapping. But it would help if it involved at least a teaspoon of logic rather than a bucket full of fairy dust and unicorns. I mean, why would the Jets want Marner? They already have enough guys who don’t score in the playoffs.

Some interesting stuff from Murat Ates in his two–part survey of the Jets faithful for The Athletic. For example, 78.4 per cent of nearly 1,000 respondents are convinced Winnipeg’s latest crusade was “a success.” Say what? Crawling into the Stanley Cup tournament as the eighth seed and surrendering meekly to the Vegas Golden Knights warrants an “atta boy” from the faithful? Meantime, 81.4 per cent gave them a passing grade of either B or C. Apparently those fans nodded off in class, because they missed the part about the Jets being a .579 outfit on the season. According to the Manitoba provincial report card, that’s a D+ grade, meaning, “limited understanding and application of concepts and skills.” That sounds about right to me, so I give the Jets faithful an F for their Bs and Cs.

Also of note in Murat’s findings: 77 per cent want Rink Rat Scheifele on the next stage coach out of Dodge, 68 per cent want a new postal/zip code for Blake Wheeler, and 60 per cent want to see the back of Dubois’ head. Tough crowd.

A 55-year-old professor at the University of South Florida, Joseph Dituri, has established a world record for living under water, passing the old mark of 73 consecutive days, and he plans to stay submerged at the bottom of a lagoon in the Florida Keys until Day 100 on June 9. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I mean, the Maple Leafs have been treading water for 56 years.

Kidding aside, Dr. Deep Sea’s mission is a serious bit of business. Every breath he takes, every step he takes and every move he makes under water is being monitored and put under a microscope. You know, kind of like being GM of the Maple Leafs.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,155: Cops have collared the cad who allegedly stole two of the ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The shoes were pilfered in 2005 and recovered in a 2018 FBI sting operation, but no culprits were identified until last week. When swiped, the slippers were insured for $1 million, but today they’re valued at about $3.5 million. Hmmm. A pair of stinky sneakers worn by NBA star Michael Jordan in the 1998 NBA final sold at auction for a record $2.2 million last month. Does that make him the Wizard of Odour Eaters?

Rafa Nadal won’t play Paris later this month, and that saddens me. Rarely have we seen dominance in any sport greater than Nadal on the red clay of Roland Garros. He won 14 French Open titles and the only men to better tennis’ King of Clay in 115 matches were Novak Djokovic, twice, and Robin Soderling. That’s right, Rafa was 112-3. The only comparable I can think of is Secretariat’s gallop in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, which was a beast of another kind.

So, I turned on the Toronto Blue Jays-New York Yankees skirmish the other night just as the Go Yard Yankee, Aaron Judge, gave a sideways glance toward his first base coach, or the dugout, during an at-bat against Jay Jackson. To my shock, that prompted Blue Jays natterbugs Buck Martinez and Dan Shulman to suggest something fishing was going on—i.e. cheating. “You don’t wanna go throwing allegations around without knowing, but…” said Shulman. But nothing. Shulman and Martinez implied that Judge, who now has 13 dingers on the season, was cheating, even though no evidence existed to support such a claim against Major League Baseball’s reigning home run king. The commentary was as shoddy as Jackson’s next pitch, which Judge whacked 431 feet for another stroll around the bases.

Take me out to the ball game! Yes, the Winnipeg Goldeyes are back doing their thing at the beautiful Ball Yard By The Forks, and 5,736 ball fans were there Friday night to see the Local Nine whup Lake Country DockHounds 10-4 in the home opener. But it wasn’t just winning baseball on the menu—apparently there’s also something called a Grand Slamwich at Goldie’s Grill, and it’s Code Blue waiting to happen. Not to be confused with Denny’s Grand Slamwich (scrambled eggs, crumbled sausage, bacon, shaved ham and Canadian cheese on potato bread grilled with a maple spice spread and served with hash browns for $16.29), the Goldie’s Slam consists of four meat patties, four slabs of cheese, four chicken fingers, four strips of bacon, two butterflied hot dogs, nacho cheese, crispy onions, spicy ketchup, all served on garlic bread for $60. Defibrillator paddles and paramedics with a working stomach pump are extra.

It’s about fans booing Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka at the PGA championship yesterday: What’s the big deal? Athletes hear catcalls in every sport, so why should golfers be exempt?

There are numerous reports that James Harden wants out of Philly to play hoops for an NBA team with “a competitive roster and the basketball freedom for the star to be himself.” Translation: “My ego is too big to share the floor with MVP Joel Embiid, so I’m going to stomp my feet and take my ball and beard back to Houston.”

So, they packed ’em in at Wembley Stadium for the Manchester United-Chelsea women’s FA Cup final, with a head count of 77,390. That’s a world futbol record for a female domestic club match. Meantime, in The Republic of Tranna, 19,923 folks crammed into Scotiabank Arena for a WNBA friendly between Chicago Sky and Minnesota Lynx. Makes me wonder what the Premier Hockey Federation and the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association are doing wrong, since their games attract only friends and family. Oh wait. I remember now. They’re too busy fighting each other to do what’s right for Ponytail Puck.

And, finally, Reba McEntire will replace Blake Shelton as a coach on The Voice next season. And I can’t believe I mentioned those two in the same sentence. One is a legendary country singer, the other has fooled a whole lot of people.

Let’s talk about the future of Ponytail Puck…holy Moses that man is slow…chirping at Augusta National…climbing the walls…baseball and beer…Barney Fife umping in the majors…chump change in the CFL…and other things on my mind…

Once members of the Canadian and American shinny sides collect their shiny gold and silver trinkets tonight in Brampton, those of us who give more than a passing glance toward Ponytail Puck will ask the obvious question.

To wit: What’s next?

Surely it can’t be status quo for women’s professional hockey.

I mean, members of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association have been flitting hither and yon for the past four years, participating in glorified scrimmages and dressed up in hamburger chain and bank logos, and their fervent hope has been for the Premier Hockey Federation to make like summer wages. You know, disappear. That, in turn, would inspire the National Hockey League to adopt the PWHPA orphans, and Ponytail Puck would live happily ever after as one Super League.

Hasn’t happened.

The PHF (nee National Women’s Hockey League) continues to disappoint the PWHPA by its mere existence, and it recently concluded its eighth season, with the Toronto Six emerging as the first champion north of the Canada-U.S.A. boundary. Most noteworthy, there’s no indication that the seven-team loop is inclined to vamoose and, more to the point, it shall drop the puck again next autumn with a bulked up salary cap ($1.5 million per club) and bulked-up benefits.

The PWHPA, meanwhile, is…well, that’s the mystery.

The Canadian Women’s Hockey League went up in flames on May 1, 2019, and the PWHPA rose from its ashes 18 days later with high chatter of a helter-skelter Dream Gap Tour, but there’s really no there there, unless a bunch of now-dog-eared snapshots with Billie Jean King is a bragging point. In a way, it’s like LIV Golf: When are the tournaments, where are the tournaments and, say, does anyone know if they’re on TV or where we can find them online?

There’s no argument that PWHPA membership represents the elite of Ponytail Puck. All but one player (Rebecca Gilmore of the PHF’s Boston Pride) on the current Canadian and American rosters at the IIHF Women’s World Championship in Brampton are Dream Gappers (or American college kids), but the crème de la crème has nowhere to go once the final buzzer sounds in the gold medal match tonight. Unless it’s back to the drawing board to find a solution to Ponytail Puck’s split personality that’s in “shambles.”

That’s Kendall Schofield Coyne’s word, not mine.

The former U.S. captain made that statement in a natter with the San Francisco Chronicle in December 2019 and, unless the PWHPA has something hidden beneath its bonnet and plans to spring some glad tidings on us post-world tournament, Ponytail Puck will remain in “shambles” with one legit league and one sideshow, both of which will be largely ignored by mainstream media.

Make no mistake, jock journos and their editors have seldom done women’s professional shinny any favors, and a strong case can be made that they ignored the CWHL out of business, a disinterest that did not go unnoticed by league executives.

Calgary Inferno GM Kristen Hagg described her team as “Calgary’s best-kept secret,” and added: “We live in a society where people do not value women’s sport. Most of us have been socialized to accept men’s sport as dominant and somehow automatically more interesting. The problem is that once society internalizes falsehood, it’s not easy to correct it.”

Sami Jo Small, once GM of Toronto Furies and now president of Toronto Six, was singing from the same songbook: “People are supportive of women’s hockey. They love to watch it, but they don’t know how to watch it. That’s one of my biggest battles, to get people to know where to watch these games, how to watch these games, where to buy the tickets, and get them into the venue. Not just watching the Olympics.”

Looks like it’s deja vu all over again.

For example:

When the Six won the PHF title in March, TSN slotted the story into the 40th minute of a 60-minute show, while Sportsnet gave it bottom-feeder play in the 53rd minute.
In advance of a quarterfinal skirmish between Canada and Sweden on Thursday, the Toronto Sun could only find room for five paragraphs on the hockey game—in its sports briefs package on the 12th page of a 12-page section. It was bunched in with copy on UEFA futbol, NASCAR racing and, get this, an NFL player assaulting a women. (Running copy on women’s hockey together with the assault of a woman is some kind of sick joke or extremely lame news judgment.)
In a quick scan of sports sections on Our Frozen Tundra yesterday, seven of nine had zero (0, as in zilch, nil, nada) mention of the world tournament, which had entered the semifinal round.
At the Beijing Olympic Games slightly more than a year ago, Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star delivered this harsh assessment of Ponytail Puck: “Women’s hockey doesn’t belong in the Games. It’s a cheap medal, in no way comparable to the paramountcy that some nations historically enjoy in a specific sport—like the Norwegians and cross-country skiing or Jamaicans and sprinting. There is at least some semblance of competition—gobs of it actually — with scads of elite athletes to make a challenge.” She closed her column with this remark on the U.S.A.-Canada rivalry: “Honestly, I’m getting sick of this mythologized rivalry and everybody else an also-ran.”

Hmmm. It’s either scant press or bad press.

None of this is to say it’s solely on mainstream media to spread the good word, and it’s important to note that the PWHPA doesn’t do Ponytail Puck any favors.

Never mind the hit-and-miss nature of their glorified scrimmages and the great divide they created with the PHF. I called up the Dream Gappers’ website this morning, and the most recent posting is dated March 3, even as a healthy portion of the PWHPA constituency has been front and centre at the World Championship for the past 10 days. What their membership is doing isn’t worth noting?

I’m sorry, but they can’t make mainstream media give a damn if they don’t give a damn themselves.

No matter what’s next for women’s professional hockey, there has to be more to sell than U.S.A.-Canada if the PWHPA membership expects to earn a living wage at their preferred craft.

FYI: If you’re wondering, and you probably aren’t, there are 10 PHF players on rosters at the world tournament.

The female gum flappers on TSN really need to refrain from calling U.S.-Canada the “greatest rivalry in sports.” It’s pure nonsense. Everyone knows the “greatest rivalry in sports” is Tiger Woods’ legal team vs. any of his ex-wives/girlfriends’ lawyers.

Some Masters tournament leftovers: For those of you scoring at home, this is Woods’ scorecard for golf majors since he drove his vehicle into a ditch two years ago:
Masters: 47th.
PGA: Quit after 3 rounds.
U.S. Open: Did not play.
Open Championship: Missed cut.
Masters: Quit in third round.

Did you catch Patrick Cantlay’s slow-poke play at last weekend’s Masters? He took so much time between shots that Aaron Rodgers changed his mind about where to play football next season another dozen times.

I swear, if Moses had been as slow as Cantlay, we’d still be waiting for the last three Commandments.

This from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna: “I do love watching the Masters, but I wonder: Can we edit out the bird chirping that’s heard in the background?” Oh, yes, by all means let’s get those pesky birds to shut the hell up. Perhaps we can take a weed whacker to all the azaleas, too. Good grief.

Just wondering: What does Simmons shout at on those days when there are no clouds in the sky?

I note F1 racing plans to put the brakes on the hazardous practice of team crews climbing the pit wall to wave their cars home. Meanwhile, Toronto Maple Leafs fans are expected to start climbing the walls any day now.

Six teams in Major League Baseball have called for a changeup on beer sales and are now serving into the eighth inning. So we’ve gone from the Juiced Ball Era to the Juiced Fan Era.

I’ve been following and watching baseball since the mid-1950s (go Brooklyn Dodgers!), and I feel obliged to say Shohei Ohtani is the best ballplayer in my lifetime. Go ahead and argue Willie Mays if you like, but the Say Hey kid never did what Shotime is doing.

Department of Dumb: Cody Bellinger of the Chicago Cubs returned to his old haunt, Dodger Stadium in L.A. on Friday night, and the faithful at Chavez Ravine acknowledged their former outfielder/first sacker with a warm ovation. Bellinger stepped out of the batter’s box for no longer than it takes to say “Jackie Robinson,” then home plate umpire Jim Wolf promptly slapped him with a pitch clock violation while the applause continued. Hey, it’s great that the pitch clock has put some lickety-split into MLB games, but this was buffoonish Barney Fife giving Goober a ticket for helping an old lady walk across Main Street in Mayberry.

Some among the rabble wonder why the Winnipeg Blue Bombers continue to make friends while folks are abandoning the Winnipeg Jets. I think it’s quite simple: Sticker price. I mean, you can purchase an 11-game season ticket package to watch Adam Bighill and the Big Blue take another run at the Grey Cup for anywhere from $150 (youth) to $1,209, whereas it’ll set you back $2,554 to $8,002 to watch Logan Stanley lumber around the freeze with the Jets. Do the math.

I don’t know about you, but Mackenzie Zacharias’ retreat from elite curling to pursue “other passions” for at least a year caught me by surprise. Mackenzie, 23, is a rising star among Canada’s Pebble People and she’s already been to two Scotties Tournament of Hearts—one skipping her own Manitoba team and, two months ago, throwing second stones for Jennifer Jones. It’s never good to see our fine, young curlers walk away from the game, but here’s hoping she finds what she’s after.

So tell us, Brent Laing, how do you think you and your bride, the aforementioned J. Jones, will get on at the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship beginning next weekend in South Korea? “I’m old enough to remember what it was like to compete at the world championship and it used to be that Canada could go over and play pretty well and win,” Laing tells Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun. “That’s just not the case anymore. It has nothing to do with Canada being worse. It has everything to do with there being more teams at the top level. There are a handful of teams over there that I know if we play our best, we may still not win. That never used to be the case. If we went and did that 10 years ago, I’m pretty confident our best would beat everybody else’s best. That’s just not the case anymore.” In other words, spare Brent and Jennifer the cheap shots on social media if they come up empty in Korea.

Looking for some curling memorabilia? Well, check out the For the Love of Curling online auction that offers items from nick-nacks to apparel signed by some of our elite Pebble People. Bidding closes at 2 p.m. Eastern on April 23.

Toronto Argos quarterback Chad Kelly has been flapping his gums again, which means we should probably give a listen since Swag’s hot takes are entertaining, even if very self-indulgent (he’s quite fond of himself). Last November, you might recall, he appeared on Pardon My Take and informed the natterbugs that he’s better than “50 per cent” of starting QBs in the NFL. Now, he has an issue with the chump change the Boatmen are paying him. “Obviously, I was on a shit contract and still am,” he says. “I mean, it’s not a shit contract, but it’s all incentive-based. Whereas guys want guaranteed money, guys want base salary. You shouldn’t want to just hit the incentives, you want to make more.” Well, okay, he collected $91,000 last season, plus bonus money, and his haul for the upcoming Canadian Football League crusade will be somewhere between $87,000 and $239,000. That’s for seven months of work. And it’s “shit” pay? Geez, maybe the 36 fans of Rouge Football in the Republic of Tranna can fire up a GoFundMe page for the poor guy. That ought to fetch at least $3.95.

And, finally, out here in Victoria, we count flowers at this time of the year. Back in Good Ol’ Hometown, they count potholes—more than 22,300 filled to date in 2023. Just wondering, do city work crews play The Beatles’ Fixing A Hole as background music when they’re on the business end of a shovel?

Let’s talk about the NHL’s “holy” hockey players and bogus ballyhoo…hey, what about Wick?…wagering $222,000 to win $2,000 on Tiger losing…digging the long ball…a gay man is the world curling champion skip…calling old West Kildonan North Stars…and other things on my mind…

What are we to make of the growing Rainbow Resistance Movement in the National Hockey League?

Well, in the grand scheme of things, a hockey jersey seems like a piffling talking point when there are more than 60 countries on our planet where it’s a crime to be gay or transgender (punishable by death in 11 locales), and a mind-numbing 400-plus anti-LGBT(etc.) bills have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S.A. this year.

So, ya, petite pommes de terre.

Except Pride nights in the NHL have become a talking point because it shouldn’t be a talking point.

That is to say, I always hold out hope that those of us in the LGBT(etc.) community are past being told we don’t belong. We are, after all, 23 years into the 21st century and I wouldn’t expect a prominent business that trumpets ‘Hockey Is For Everyone’ to tell us we aren’t welcome.

Yet, when Ilya Samsonov refuses to put a Pride decal on the back of his goalie mask; when James Reimer, Eric and Marc Staal, Ivan Provorov, Ilya Lyubushkin, Andrei Kuzmenko and Denis Gurianov decline to don rainbow-themed apparel and/or stick tape for 15 minutes; when the New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues, Chicago Blackhawks and Minnesota Wild keep their Pride sweaters in storage—that’s what many in the LGBT(etc.) collective hear. We aren’t welcome.

Some naysayers suggest that’s selective hearing rooted in our own insecurities, but I suggest those people have never been required to justify their very existence while looking for lodgings, service, employment, a marriage licence, the opportunity to adopt children, etc. You know, basic human rights.

So I posit that it’s more accurate to say what some in the LGBT(etc.) collective are feeling is the fallout from many lifetimes of indignities.

A number of years ago, for example, I was shopping in a funky clothing boutique, searching for a gift. An employee approached and, in a harsh tone loud enough for others in the shop to hear, barked at me: “We don’t want your kind in here!”

Since that day, I’ve been harassed, maligned, ostracized, assaulted and bullied based strictly on sexuality and/or gender identity. It hurt like hell. And most, if not all, the people I know in the LGBT(etc.) community have experienced similar affronts meant to make them feel like lesser-thans or disenfranchised.

Thus, as much as a small group of hockey players/teams declining to support a marginalized community under increasing attack is a trivial matter to some, it serves as a haunting echo to myself and others. It saddens me and exposes the NHL’s broad-stroke claim of inclusiveness as bogus ballyhoo.

So let’s talk about “Hockey Is For Everyone.”

If it’s women’s shinny, yes, it appears to be for everyone.

Elite female hockey has featured Black players, Indigenous players, Asian players, gay players, bisexual players and transgender players, and we see it in the faces in the stands. If aliens were to touch down and inhabit our blue orb tomorrow—and some of them could skate and shoot a puck like Marie-Philip Poulin—I’m sure there would be room for the extraterrestrials in Ponytail Puck.

If, on the other hand, it’s the NHL we’re talking about…well, gays are the extraterrestrials.

The NHL trotted out its Trademark Big Lie about “Hockey Is For Everyone” in February 2017, at which time there had never been an openly gay player. Ever. That box still hasn’t been checked off. Not even by someone who’s come out in retirement. Which is astoundingly illogical, since that takes in approximately 8,000 men and 106 years. Nary a gay man? Right. And there are no Catholics in Rome.

It is, however, one thing for elite gay male hockey players to remain closeted, but it’s another matter to tell the LGBT(etc.) community that there’s no room at the inn.

Two reasons have been advanced for this: Russia and Bible scripture.

We’re told there’s a fear, real or imagined, among Russian players that wearing Pride gear is in conflict with Vlad Putin’s anti-gay propaganda law, and the wrath of the dictator’s henchmen shall descend upon them or their families back home should they play along with Pride initiatives.

Well, I can’t speak to that fear because, thankfully, I don’t live in Russia, nor have I ever visited. I just know it to be an untrustworthy nation, a feeling that took root for me in the late 1950s/early 1960s when it was the Soviet Union and Nikita Khruschev was threatening to lob his nuclear weapons at us and blow us all the hell up. The Cuban Missile Crisis and air raid drills, those were the fears I knew, and I can’t say anything’s different today. I still don’t trust the comrades.

Religion, meanwhile, is a different head of lettuce. I have an acquaintance with the church.

I was baptized and raised Roman Catholic.

I had confirmation and received my first Holy Communion at age 7.

I spent time in the confessional, often feeling obliged to ‘fess up to sins I actually hadn’t committed.

(True story: I’d whisper through the screen window between myself and the parish priest to inform him that there was a black blotch on my soul because I had stolen a candy bar from the corner store, which was a lie. So I’d then confess to lying, which was the truth. My penance was usually five Hail Marys, and I always walked out of the confessional feeling cleansed and not at all bummed out about lying.)

I attended mass every Sunday and on the first Friday of every month, which was mandatory for students at my Catholic schools.

I was taught by nuns through Grade 8, always wary of their 12-inch, wooden knuckle-rappers (you probably called it a “ruler”), and time was devoted each day to Catechism, which is when us sprigs learned of the miracle man Jesus and his 12 hangers-on.

And, my oh my, such stories we were told: Raising the dead, stilling storms, walking on H2O, hocus pocus involving fish and bread, turning water into wine, selling out a dear friend with a kiss, healing the lame, the sick, the deaf and the blind with the touch of a hand, wandering the wilderness for 40 days and nights without so much as a snack. That stuff was better than anything on TV. It left me gobsmacked.

The nuns with the 12-inch, wooden knuckle-rappers would regale us with these, and other, biblical tales that seemed more fable than fact, and we were expected to accept them as the gospel truth, no matter how far they stretched the boundary of reason.

We were a captive audience, awash in naiveté and prepared to believe anything those nuns, or the parish priests, told us. If they informed us Jesus fed thousands with no more food than what we had in our school lunch boxes, then it was true. If they told us Catholics are the only people who qualify for entry into Heaven (they did) or that we’d literally burn in a place called Hell if we committed a mortal sin (they did), we bought it, lock, stock and Bible scripture.

Odd thing, though: My strength of recall (which, admittedly, has ebbed) fails to recapture a single moment (not one) when the nuns/priests of my youth gave us the Bible’s, or Jesus’, take on the (apparent) evils of homosexuality.

But, based on “Sacred Scripture,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that gay sex acts are “of grave depravity” and “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.” The inclination toward gay tendencies, meanwhile, is “objectively disordered.” Gay people have a “condition.”

So if I read it correctly, gay sex is a sin while gay people have something akin to dandruff, which can be treated and remedied.

I suppose this is what the NHL players believe when they tell us they love LGBT(etc.) people yet their religion doesn’t allow them to use a rainbow-themed jersey for a welcome mat.

I hesitate to question the depth and sincerity of anyone’s faith, but those outriders leave themselves open to accusations of hypocrisy. They cannot support the LGBT(etc.) community because gay sex is a sin? Fine. Yet how many among them have lusted after a woman who isn’t their wife?

The Sermon on the Mount Carl Bloch, 1890

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus told the people: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

It’s the seventh commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery. It’s considered such a grave sin that it’s mentioned 52 times in the Bible.

I know male hockey players. Trust me, they lust after women, and many of them act on that lust. According to Jesus, that’s a sin long before clothes begin to come off. Yet I’ve never read or heard of a player, or talked to a player, who denied or turned away a teammate based on adulterous behavior.

In other words, the sinners condemn the sinners (gay people) but not the sinners (adulterers).

Sounds positively unChristian to me.

So, again, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Faith can be a beautiful thing. To this day, I carry a rosary with me, I wear a medallion of the Virgin Mary and a cross of Jesus, I believe in angels and anticipate the day they come and carry me to the other side of the river.

But I don’t pick and choose scripture to serve an agenda that disenfranchises a beleaguered and oppressed people. It appears to me that’s what the “holy” hockey players are doing.

Matthew 23:28: “Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”

Amen.

Whenever an LGBT(etc.) issue in sports becomes a topic du jour, I look and listen for gay voices in mainstream jock journalism to bring perspective and personal insight to the discussion. Alas, other than Devin Heroux of the CBC, those voices don’t exist. Maybe there are LGBT(etc.) news snoops on Our Frozen Tundra that I don’t know about. If so, I wish they’d join the conversation. Allies are wonderful, but I’d rather read or listen to someone with skin in the game.

Interesting read on Ponytail Puck from Hailey Salvian in The Athletic. She took the pulse of women’s hockey by asking 30-plus elite players from Canada and the U.S. their views on the game, and she included this question: What is the biggest issue facing women’s hockey? One answer: “We need to get back to having a league with a real season where we can play hockey.” I don’t know if that’s arrogance or ignorance from a member of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, but it’s definitely stupid. There is a league with a real season—the Premier Hockey Federation, which crowned the Toronto Six champion on March 26.

So who’s the best female player of all time? Gotta be Hayley Wickenheiser, no? No. According to Hailey’s poll, Marie-Philip Poulin is numero uno (62% of the vote), with Hilary Knight (21%) and Cammi Granato (9%) next in line. Jayna Hefford, Cassie Campbell-Pascall also received votes. And the great Wickenheiser? Nary a vote. Go figure.

No surprise that the TV talking heads continue to fawn over Tiger Woods, as if he’s still leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Apparently, his making the Masters cut is undeniable evidence that his Superman cape is not torn and tattered, and it doesn’t matter that 63-year-old Fred Couples qualified to play the weekend with a better score. Woods finished Saturday last on the leaderboard, but the squawk boxes couldn’t make it all about him today because he withdrew.

That was some kind of scary stuff during second-round play at the Masters golf tournament at Augusta National on Friday, when stormy weather and high winds brought down three giant trees. Fortunately, the area was clear of patrons, thus no injuries.

Actual BBC headline: “Trees fall at stormy Augusta.”

How TV announcers described it: “Boy, that was quick-thinking and fast-acting by Tiger Woods, who prevented a disaster by moving patrons away from 17 tee and out of harm’s way just seconds before those giant trees toppled to the ground. No one saw it coming except Tiger, and we can only imagine how many lives the great man saved today.”

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,147: Would you wager $222,000 on Woods to not win the Masters? Well, one bettor did that very thing at Circa Sportsbook before the boys teed off on Thursday at Augusta National. The payout when Tiger comes up short? Just $2,000. Hmmm. Sounds like my last grocery bill.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,148: According to researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, there’s been a jump in dingers in Major League Baseball due to our shifting climate. In a paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, scientist and co-author Justin Mankin writes, “Global warming is juicing home runs.” Apparently, more than 500 HRs since 2010 are the fallout from “historical warming.” Hmmm. And here I thought it was due to syringes and butt cheeks.

To arrive at their conclusion, the Dartmouth climate nerds pored over data from 100,000 games and 200,000-plus balls swatted into play, as well as weather, facilities and other pertinent points. I don’t know if chicks still “dig the long ball,” but Greta Thunberg disapproves.

What’s that Yogi Berra line about attendance? Oh ya: “If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.” And no one in Oakland is stopping the rabble from attending Athletics games. The head count at Oakland-Alameda County Colisum last Tuesday was 3,407. Twenty-four hours later, 4,930 took in the ol’ ballgame. Imagine that, less than 5,000 fans. Or, as the Arizona Coyotes call it, “a near sellout.”

Real nice read from young Taylor Allen in the Drab Slab last week. He tells us all about local volleyball player Averie Allard, who’s now playing pro in Italy. Good stuff.

Our women won a bronze medal at the world curling championship and our men collected silver Sunday in Bytown. So I ask: Do the alarmists still demand a major overhaul of our entire system, or have the flaws in the program been greatly exaggerated?

Chalk one up for the LGBT(etc.) community: Skip Bruce Mouat of the freshly minted world champion Scottish team, which whupped Brad Gushue and the boys 9-3 in the men’s final Sunday afternoon, is an openly gay man.

And, finally, the Stars are aligning for a big reunion bash on April 15 at Shooters Golf Course in Good Ol’ Hometown. I’m talking about my old outfit, the West Kildonan North Stars, and organizer Gord Homenick is looking for more former players to join in the fun. If you wore the colors, coached or worked with Westkay in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, get in touch with Gord, at ghomenick@shaw.ca or 204-782-1884.

Let’s talk about sports writers refusing to stick to writing sports…and a little of this and a little of that…

Once again, we are hearing a loud chorus of “stick to sports” from the peanut gallery.

Oh, yes, there are many among the rabble who believe it’s extremely ill mannered for jock journos to opine on anything other than goals, slam dunks, double faults, birdie putts, pitch counts, pitch clocks, and if Aaron Rodgers will ever get a new zip code.

Thus, they yelp for the stifling of sports scribes, in the same way and at the same volume Archie Bunker would try to stifle Edith.

A prime example would be the Twitter missive my good friend Paul Friesen of the Winnipeg Sun received the other day: “STFU. Sports journalists commenting on social or political issues are the worst. No clue. Take your f—— agenda and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”

How charming.

It’s a classic “stick to sports” rant, one of the many I’ve read on social media since Ivan Provorov started the Rainbow Resistance Movement in the National Hockey League.

I doubt the Philly Flyers defender meant to become a Pied Piper the January night he pooped on his team’s Pride-theme party by declining to wear a rainbow jersey, but it’s become follow the leader—James Reimer, Eric and Marc Staal, Ilya Lyubushkin and Andrei Kuzmenko have also opted out of a gesture meant to welcome the LGBT(etc.) community to the NHL.

Not surprisingly, numerous jock journos have delivered a stern tsk-tsking to the Defiant Six (and counting), because a great many of the scribes/talking heads lean left, politically and socially.

As an e.g., there was a collective gasp and they choked on their Cheerios when childhood heroes Bobby Orr and Jack Nicklaus pumped Donald Trump’s tires in advance of the last U.S. presidential election. They saw it as the greatest betrayal since Judas puckered up and planted a smooch on Jesus’ cheek, or at least since Roger Clemens took his syringes from Fenway Park to the Bronx.

The scribes and talking heads were told then, as they are today, to shut the hell up and stick to sports.

Except that isn’t how it works.

Sports is not a stand-alone cosmos. It’s been intersecting with politics and social issues since David forced Goliath to tap out.

Roll back to the early 20th century, when Jack Johnson and James J. Jeffries threw down for the world heavyweight boxing championship. Their tiff in Reno, Nev., on July 4, 1910, wasn’t billed the ‘Fight of the Century’ because it featured two great gladiators. It was about race and white supremacy, and that’s how the boys at ringside wrote it.

Here’s Max Baethahar of The Daily Gate City the day before the bout: “On Monday we are to see the consummation, the battle of the century, the battle of giants, a contest for physical supremacy between the white and black races.”

After Johnson kayoed Jeffries in the 15th round, race riots promptly broke out across America. At least 17 Black people and two whites were killed. That, not boxing, was the talking point.

When Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, the dean of America’s Black sports scribes, Fay Young, delivered this message to his Chicago Defender readers: “Robinson will not be on trial as much as the Negro fan. The Negro fan has been the ‘hot potato’ dodged by managers who would have taken a chance by signing a Negro player. The unruly Negro has and can set us back 25 years…The Negro fan can help Robinson. The Negro fan can ruin him. Robinson is an American citizen, an ex-army officer, a ball player and a gentleman. Let us try and meet his qualifications as a gentleman. If you Chicagoans have got to raise a lot of hell, do a lot of cussing, go somewhere else.”

Was Young supposed to write about Robinson’s batting average when Blacks across America were celebrating one of their own who went where none had gone before?

Think Cassius Clay, who joined the Nation of Islam and became the draft dodging Muhammad Ali.

New York columnist Red Smith likened him to “those unwashed punks who picket and demonstrate against the (Vietnam) war,” while Dick Young of the New York Daily News assailed the brash heavyweight titleholder for his religious beliefs, writing, “He is a braggart, but that’s no crime or there wouldn’t be enough jails. The shame of it is that Clay will be used by the Black Muslims, to shill for their brand of hate-mongering. I do not believe Cassius Clay or anyone who thinks like him is good for my country. He is for separatism. He is for black man against white man.”

They were writing about a political and social issue of the 1960s, not jabs and knockout punches.

Similarly, German Chancellor Adolph Hitler and his white supremist Aryan Nation received as much ink in the leadup to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as Jesse Owens. During the opening ceremony, some non-German athletes acknowledged Hitler with a Nazi salute, and swatstika symbols were in abundance. When Pete Rose lost his baseball career to gambling, the scribes scribbled about athletes and vices. When washout quarterback Johnny Manziel beat up a woman, they wrote about the evils of domestic violence. When John Carlos and Tommie Smith protested the oppression of Black people in the United States—and when Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest social injustice—that’s what the jock journos focused on. When Donald Trump called any NFL player who took a knee during the Star Spangled Banner “a son of a bitch” and advocated for his firing, social unrest was the topic du jour.

Does anyone truly believe the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union was strictly about hockey bragging rights? It was Us vs. Them. Our way of life (democracy) vs. their way of life (communism).

“It was f—— war,” is how Phil Esposito described it.

After Paul Henderson delivered the decisive score 34 seconds from time in Game 8, this is what he told Dick Beddoes of the Globe and Mail: “When I scored that final goal, I finally realized what democracy was all about.”

Today, the talking points are equal pay, equal rights, misogyny, sexual orientation, racist team nicknames/logos, Pride nights, gender identity, etc., and opinionists in the toy department deal with it. They must deal with it. Otherwise, they aren’t doing their jobs.

Last June the New York Times instructed its subsidiary The Athletic to keep out of politics: No expression of political leanings on social media or any platform. That’s just stupid. Can you imagine where we’d be if TSN told Rick Westhead that both Hockey Canada and Soccer Canada were off-limits to his deep dives?

Corey Masisak of The Athletic asked the aforementioned Reimer this question after the San Jose Sharks goaltender declined to wear a Pride jersey: “What are your thoughts on transgender people?” Reimer’s response: “My beliefs in Christ, what I think the Bible says on that stuff.” What he “thinks” The Bible says? He doesn’t know? Then what’s his beef with wearing a Pride jersey?

Not sure what Ron MacLean was going on about in a gum-flapper with Brian Burke last week on Hockey Night in Canada, but he mentioned something about Aristotle and the “human approach to ethics.” He then asked the Pittsburgh Penguins president how we find a “compromise or a middle ground.” Compromise? Middle ground? On ethics? Sheesh.

Few athletes will keep me up long past my bedtime. Caitlin Clark is one of them. My eyeballs were glued to the flatscreen on Friday night as she put the final touches to a 41-point performance in Iowa Hawkeyes 77-73 win over the previously unbeaten South Carolina Gamecocks. I’m not a huge hoops fan. I think the last game I watched from tipoff to final buzzer featured the Los Angeles Lakers and Jerry West when he was a player not an NBA logo, and I haven’t seen a minute of the NCAA men’s tournament. But I’ve taken a gander at Caitlin and the women’s March Madness twice now, and I like what I see. That’s riveting theatre.

An example of anti-female bias in sports media: On TSN’s overnight SportsCentre last Sunday/Monday, there was no mention of the Toronto Six winning the Premier Hockey Federation title until the show was into its 40th minute. There was just one 20-second highlight, the winning goal in a 4-3 OT game. Over at Sportsnet, they couldn’t find room for the Six until the 53rd minute. On the print side, the Toronto Sun completely ignored the Six’ success vs. Minnesota Whitecaps. That’s what they think of the world’s sole professional women’s hockey league.

Hey, it’s National Hockey Card Day on April 15. Just in time for spring, when the kids are hauling their bikes out of storage and looking for something to stick between the spokes to get that clackety-clack-clack-clack sound.

I note the name Wally Buono will be added to the B.C. Leos Wall of Fame in August. You mean he wasn’t there already?

Now that Jennifer Jones has added a Canadian mixed doubles title to her resume, does any doubt remain that she’s the finest curler ever produced on Manitoba pebble?

So, many times Manitoba champion Mike McEwen is going green, which is to say he’ll now be skipping a team on the Flattest of Lands, with Colton Flasch, Kevin and Dan Marsh as his accomplices. The boys will be curling out of Saskatoon, and I think one thing is certain: Mike won’t look any better in green than Matt Dunstone or Chelsea Carey did. Kermit the Frog looks good in green, Manitoba curlers don’t.

And, finally, some interesting stuff in weekly newsletters from Drab Slab sports editor Jason Bell and sports columnist Mad Mike McIntyre.

Let’s start with Bell. Writing about the highs and lows of getting a scoop and being scooped, he says: “There also comes a time when you tip your hat to the competition. And I’ll do that publicly to Winnipeg Sun columnist Paul Friesen, who wrote this week about the sexism, racism and hate that Gimli curler Kerri Einarson and her team has been subjected to online—during and after their latest effort at the world women’s championship. It’s ugly. And it’s ever so sad.”

Imagine that, acknowledging you got your butt booted and tipping your chapeau to a foe. Nice touch.

Meantime, I found Mad Mike’s newsletter interesting because he delivered his personal rankings of favorite NHL cities and barns.

Cities:
1. Winnipeg. Cheesy, sure, but there really is no place like home. Yes, even when winter refuses to pack its bags as we approach April.
2. New York City. Of course, this covers three teams in the Rangers, Islanders and Devils. The Big Apple simply can’t be beat.
3. Calgary. Some close friends and family members live there, so a visit is always a highlight.
4. Minneapolis/St. Paul. Same as above.
5. Vegas. Fairly self-explanatory, I would think!

Barns:
1. Madison Square Garden (New York). The World’s Most Famous Arena is truly incredible.
2. T-Mobile Arena (Las Vegas). The atmosphere is tough to beat.
3. Bell Centre (Montreal). A shrine to hockey history.
4. United Centre (Chicago). The best anthem in sports, hands down.
5. Scotiabank Arena (Toronto). The spotlight is bright. The stage is big.

That got me to thinking about my own time on the NHL beat for various rags, most notably the Winnipeg Tribune and Sun.

Cities:
1. Quebec City. Such character. Such beauty. Such lovely people.
2. Montreal. I love the joie de vivre of the French.
3. Los Angeles. Never mind the earthquakes and smog. I got to ride an elevator with Hawkeye Pierce of M*A*S*H once, and he was the spitting image of Alan Alda.

Barns:
1. Montreal Forum. The ultimate shinny shrine and best hot dogs in the world.
2. Maple Leaf Gardens. A bit of a dump, but so much history.
3. Chicago Stadium. Loudest room I’ve ever been in.

Let’s talk about the Gimli Gals and their shiny bronze medal…Fanatics and Lady Gaga’s meat dress…a standing O for Joe in the House…scripture and shinny…Jimmy G and a lifetime of freebes at the Chicken Ranch…Journalism 101…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Kerri Einarson…

Well, at least you’re coming home from Sweden with a trinket, even if bronze isn’t the color of choice.

We all know that you, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Briane Harris would have preferred to leave Tre Kroner country with gold knickknacks, but the rest of the planet’s female Pebble People long ago stopped cringing at the mere sight of the Maple Leaf and the World Women’s Curling Championship is a tough gig.

Problem is, many among the rabble still don’t get it. They figure any Canadian curler worth her weight in Scotties tissues ought to be able to tumble out of bed, have a quick cup o’ java and a muffin, then give both Silvana Tirinzoni and Anna Hasselborg a wedgie later in the day. No muss, no fuss. Just collect a gold medal and disappear until the frost is on the pumpkin again.

Except we both know that isn’t how it works.

Briane Harris, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Kerri Einarson.

You and your gal pals from Gimli have had three kicks at the can, Kerri, and your plunder includes two bronze medals, the first earned a year ago and the second this very day with your 8-5 victory over Sweden’s Hasselborg.

I say that’s admirable, but others don’t see it that way. All they see is failure.

I don’t know how much time you spend on social media, Kerri, but you might want to steer clear of it for a few days because the carping began before today’s joust with Hasselborg and, predictably, much of it is negative with gusts up to mean-spirited and just plain idiotic.

Some have called your team “a joke” and “not even in the top five in Canada” and “a curling flop.” Others are calling you and your gal pals “club curlers” and suggest you and Val take up new hobbies. (Like I said, idiotic.) Blah, blah, blah and yadda, yadda, yadda.

Hey, critique is okay, Kerri, but I’ll never understand why the rabble has to get stupid about it.

Personally, I’m not in the habit of trashing athletes who wear the Maple Leaf on the global stage, not unless they go all Ben Johnson and heap disgrace on Our Frozen Tundra.

I also have a soft spot for curlers, Kerri. I know they’re the finest collection of people in jockdom— every-day earthlings with every-day jobs and a special skill—and anyone who’s spent time with them will say the same thing. Pebble People rock!

So try not to let the buzz-kills dim the day, Kerri.

Take comfort in the knowledge that you, Val, Shannon and Briane are the finest outfit in Canada and third best on the planet. Enjoy your summer, then come back for more once the frost is back on the pumpkin.

D’oh Boy commentary of the week comes from old friend and former Postmedia Edmonton columnist Terry Jones. After the Einarson team finished the round-robin portion of the tournament at 7-5, he took to Twitter to inform us that the Gimli gals “definitely don’t deserve to be involved” in the playoffs. What a remarkably dense remark, especially for a Canadian Curling Hall of Fame scribe. Since the global championship shifted to a six-teams playoff format, outfits with seven wins (or worse) have earned a spot in the playoff round every year.
2023: 7-5 (.583)
2022: 7-5 (.583)
2021: 7-6 (.538)
2019: 6-6 (.500)
2018: 6-6 (.500)
I’m not sure what part of those numbers Jonesey doesn’t understand, but I suppose we can cut him some slack since he’s an Alberta boy who’s been brainwashed into believing the inturn and outturn were first introduced on a frozen pond at the intersection of Jasper and 105th in downtown E-Town.

The National Hockey League has chosen Fanatics to replace adidas as its official jersey-maker beginning in 2024-25, and scores of noses are out of joint. Oh, yes, many among the rabble are outraged! Why, there hasn’t been this big a fashion foofaraw since Lady Gaga showed up at the 2010 MTV Music Video Awards adorned in a raw meat dress, a slab of raw meat on her head, and her feet wrapped in raw meat shoes that would have fit a prize hereford. And I don’t get it. I mean, do the seamstresses at Fanatics sew with their knees and elbows? Frankly, I’ve never understood why anyone would fork out $300 for a garment with another person’s name on it, so don’t ask me to explain fan outrage over laundry.

Lady Gaga’s meat gown, by the way, was approximately 50 pounds of Argentinian beef bought at a Los Angeles butcher shop. At, say, $20 a pound, that’s a $1,000 gown, far cheaper than anything she would have found on the Prada rack.

U.S. President Joe Biden received a standing O in the House of Commons the other day, simply for saying he likes Canada’s NHL teams but not the Toronto Maple Leafs. Can we get Joe’s name on the ballot for our next federal election?

Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Ivan Provorov, James Reimer and the Staal boys, Eric and Marc, refused to wear a rainbow-themed jersey on team Pride Nights because it runs contrary to their religious beliefs. Yet they gladly work for, and accept paycheques from, owners who openly support the LGBT(etc.) community. In other words, they won’t do the bidding for an LGBT(etc.) ally, but the LGBT(etc.) ally’s money is good. Interesting how that works.

Eric Staal insists he has never—ever, ever, ever—worn a Pride warmup jersey, except there’s photographic and video evidence of him adorned in a Pride warmup jersey while with the Montreal Canadiens in 2021. He must have misplaced his Bible before that game.

Interesting results from the annual NHL Players Association poll of 626 members, but, given the climate of the day, I would have asked them questions about how deep their religious beliefs run. To wit:
a) If a group of fans with a Pride flag asked you to pose with them for a pic, would you oblige or tell them your Bible won’t allow it and stomp off?
b) If a member of your family came out as gay, would you openly support them, or would you disavow her or him?
c) Would you play on a team owned by a gay man or woman?
d) Do you “remember the seventh day and keep it holy” by not playing or practicing?
e) Would you accept a gay teammate and support him in every way?

Squawk boxes on the Left Flank of the Land are making a hard pitch for Quinn Hughes of the Vancouver Canucks to win the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top rearguard. As if. There’s as much chance of that happening as O.J. leading the FBI to the real killers sometime today, so they can save their oxygen. Hey, Hughes is a fine, young player, but his misguided boosters seem to think the determining factor in Norris balloting should be his +18 rating, not Erik Karlsson’s 22 goals and 90 points.

Babe alert! Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo might have received an offer he can’t refuse—nookie for life. Yup, good-looking Jimmy G has caught the attention of workers at Nevada’s famed brothel, the Chicken Ranch, and they’re offering free samples. “I almost fainted when I heard Jimmy signed with the Raiders,” said Caitlin Bell. “He deserves free sex just for joining our team. But he gets free sex for life from us just because he’s such a legit babe!” Puts a new twist on the term “quarterback option,” don’t you think?.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,146: Damien Cox of the Toronto Star figures the final dash to the Stanley Cup tournament is a giant yawn. “Another season in which the final 15 games of the NHL campaign are mostly just waiting for the playoffs, and seeing which team will have the best odds in the draft lottery. Playoff races? A thing of the past,” he tweets. Hmmm. Cox might want to have a word with the rabble in Pittsburgh, Sunshine, Fla., Calgary, Winnipeg, Nashville and on Long Island about “a thing of the past,” because last time I looked, which was this morning, their hockey heroes are still squabbling over final seeding in the present.

Hell freezes over, Vol. 1,288: Toronto Six were on the sports front of both the Toronto Star and Toronto Sun last Tuesday.

An ‘F’ in Journalism 101: How do you write an entire column on the Six and not mention the Premier Hockey Federation? Well, we’ll have to ask Steve Simmons about that. The Postmedia Tranna scribe, you see, waxed on in an ode to the Six and women’s hockey, yet he failed to mention what league they play in, nor did he mention the PHF’s competition, the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, when commenting on the overall state of Ponytail Puck. The best he could do was inform readers that there’s “one league and a partial second league of better talent.” The column wouldn’t have passed the sniff test in Journalism 101, but facts are a casualty when a guy parachutes in to scribble a know-it-all, one-off piece.

Simmons estimated the head count for the Six-Connecticut Whale semifinal skirmish at Mattamy Athletic Centre in the Republic of Tranna at 600, and suggested “the game deserved more. The players deserved better. This was a game in need of a full house, in need of atmosphere that came as much from the stands as it did from those on the ice.” Pot meet kettle. Simmons and the Toronto Sun have ignored the Six for almost the entirety of their three-year existence. Don’t the women “deserve” better press coverage?

The Isobel Cup, by the way, will be awarded this very night at Mullett Arena in Tempe, Ariz., where the Six and Minnesota Whitecaps squabble over PHF bragging rights.

Good grief, the Winnipeg Sun had a two-page sports section on Wednesday, with a grand total of three articles. As an alumnus who was there when the good times rolled, that’s painful to see.

And, finally, here’s what head coach Deion Sanders told his Colorado Buffaloes before they bolted for spring break: “Fellas, be careful on your break. Be careful on your comings and goings. Everyone ain’t for you, everyone ain’t with you, everybody don’t love you, everybody don’t appreciate you, everybody don’t want you to be that guy you plan on being, and your life is of value. Your life is of essence. You are somebody. You are important. So, be careful please. We don’t want to put on all black and go to a funeral. We want to put on all black and go out there and whoop somebody.” Kind of sad that Prime Time felt obliged to deliver that sermon.

Let’s talk about the Rainbow Resistance Movement in the NHL… flashing back to the 1970s…burger joints, bankers and Billie Jean King in Ponytail Puck…Nickelback and Nippleback…a female in the old boys club…taking a dive…and other things on my mind…

I took a deep sigh before beginning this essay because, you know, it’s 2023 and Pride nights at a hockey rink near you shouldn’t be a thing anymore.

Yet here I am, talking about the same old thing. (Another sigh.)

As far as I can determine, Pride nights at sporting events are designed to convey one basic message to a specific, marginalized group. To wit: Members of the LGBT(etc.) collective are welcome.

And it’s meant to be a broad-stroke embrace, a virtual hug not just for fans, but employees, as well.

“You’re lesbian? A gay man? Bisexual? Transgender? Queer? Etcetera? It’s all good. Come on down and join all the heteros to sample some of our over-priced hot dogs and beer in our safe space!”

So what does it say when a National Hockey League franchise’s most-visible, highest-paid and fawned-over employees—the on-ice workers—decline to play along?

Ivan Provorov didn’t want to play along two months ago on Philadelphia Flyers Pride Night, so he flashed the religion card after refusing to wear a team-approved jersey in support of the LGBT(etc.) community.

“My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion,” the Russian Orthodox rearguard explained, without actually explaining anything.

Houyee Chow and the Pride jersey she designed for the San Jose Sharks.

Perhaps James Reimer of the San Jose Sharks can explain it to us, because he joined the NHL’s Rainbow Resistance Movement on Saturday. While his comrades adorned themselves in LGBT(etc.)-themed jerseys in a pregame frolic, the veteran goaltender remained hunkered down in the players’ lair, perhaps quietly wondering why Jesus spent three-plus years roaming the countryside mostly in the exclusive company of 12 hand-picked men, one of whom betrayed him with, yes, a kiss.

“I am choosing not to endorse something that is counter to my personal convictions, which are based on the Bible, the highest authority in my life,” was Reimer’s reasoning in a Sharks-sanctioned statement.

He later told news snoops this: “I get what the message is. I think people are trying to support the community and I’m sure people in the community feel marginalized. For me, to some extent, that’s what you want to do is you want to love them, but what I keep reiterating is where it intersects with a Christian…you love them, but you can’t support the activity or lifestyle.”

Hmmm. Who knew that being gay was an “activity?” Or a “lifestyle?”

But if by “activity” Reimer means sex, yes, gay people are guilty of having sex, just like heterosexual men and women. If by “lifestyle” he means a 9-to-5 job, or feeding the homeless, or going to movies and dinner parties and church every Sunday, or getting married and raising families, or shopping for groceries, yes, also guilty, yer honor. You know, just like heterosexual men and women.

Hockey is an “activity.” Many gays are very good at it.

So did the Bible allow Reimer to root, root, root for Canada during the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in China? There were seven out lesbians on that Canadian team that struck gold. Brianne Jenner, one of those lesbians, was the tournament MVP. Did the Bible allow him to cheer for our soccer women who collected the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics? There were four out lesbians, one non-binary player and an out coach on that outfit.

I’m guessing that because Reimer is of good Manitoba stock, he was fully on board with our hockey and soccer sides.

But, hey, heaven forbid he slip a rainbow-colored jersey over his head, lest he turn into a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife.

Both Reimer and Provorov are right about one thing, though: It is a “choice” to support or pooh-pooh an LGBT(etc.)-friendly initiative, but it’s such a convenience to have the Bible, or any other religious dogma, to use as a defensive reflex when the predictable, yowling mob arrives to collect its pound of flesh on social media.

I just wonder if they believe the entirety of the Holy Book, or do they pick and choose which chapter and verse to accept as gospel? Do they buy into the Jesus walking on water story? How about the multiplying of loaves and fish? Water into wine? Raising the dead?

Whatever the case, spewing scripture earned Provorov and Reimer a public flogging, but it’s all good because their employers have their backs: “It’s okay to be anti-gay as long as you thump a Bible.” As if.

None of this is to ignore the New York Rangers and Minnesota Wild, two franchises that reneged on Pride Night promotions promising rainbow togs to be worn pregame, then auctioned in support of LGBT(etc.) causes. Both clubs declined to come clean on the reasoning behind the twin about-face, except, of course, to issue statements pledging unwavering support for the LGBT(etc.) community, even as their unwavering support wavered. Ditto the Sharks on Saturday.

I think we all know where this thing is headed: Pride nights will remain on team calendars, but players no longer will be paraded in rainbow-themed warmup garb. Thus, anti-gay players on NHL rosters (I like to think they’re in the minority) won’t be required to hide behind the Bible anymore. They can keep their religion and anti-gay bias on the QT.

Sigh.

This isn’t purely an NHL issue. Five pitchers with the Tampa Bay Rays didn’t want to play along on Pride Night last June, when the Major League Baseball club asked players to wear uniforms adorned with rainbow sleeve patches and rainbow TB lettering on their caps.

“A lot of it comes down to faith, to like a faith-based decision,” Jason Adam told news snoops. “So it’s a hard decision. Because ultimately we all said what we want is them to know that all are welcome and loved here. But when we put it on our bodies, I think a lot of guys decided that it’s just a lifestyle that maybe—not that they look down on anybody or think differently—it’s just that maybe we don’t want to encourage it if we believe in Jesus, who’s encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior, just like (Jesus) encourages me as a heterosexual male to abstain from sex outside of the confines of marriage. It’s no different.”

I turned on my flatscreen this week and the 1970s NHL broke out:
Anthony Stewart was on Sportsnet promoting meathead hockey.
Luke Gazdik was on Sportsnet telling us that “there is a major need” for fighting in hockey. “This is what I did for a living, so I truly love this part of the game.” And on the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League banning fisticuffs: “I think it’s a bit of a joke.” (Holy cement head, Batman!)
St. Louis Blues trotted out rasslin fossil Ric Flair to crank up the crowd and the home side.
Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington went off his nut (again), challenging the Minnesota bench, then turning total meathead by attacking Wild players.
Marc-Andre Fleury raced from one end of the freeze to the other in a bid to chuck knuckles with Binnington.
The men in stripes kept the two goalies from scratching each other’s eyes out.
Brayden Schenn said a goalie fight would have been boffo for “viewership and ratings and talking about the game.”
Good grief. Did I nod off and miss a successful coupe d’état by Vince McMahon and Triple H? Is the NHL now a WWE sideshow?

If you missed it (and my guess is you did), a burger joint beat the bankers last weekend to win what The Canadian Press described as the “coveted” 2023 Secret Cup. Translated, that means Team Harvey’s one-upped Team Scotiabank in the final skirmish of this winter’s Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association series of glorified scrimmages. The frolic was conducted in Palm Desert, Calif., where it was mostly ignored, but it did produce the PWHPA’s 1,189th photo-op with Billie Jean King.

Now that the PWHPA has ceased storming barns hither and yon, we await official word that the women have formed a second professional league to compete against the Premier Hockey Federation, with teams representing cities or states/provinces, not burger joints and banks. Ponytail Puck couldn’t make a go of it with two loops in 2019, when players were basically paid with food stamps and Canadian Tire money, so word that salaries will be in the $55,000 range makes this is an extremely iffy bit of business. That doesn’t mean it’s doomed before they drop the puck, but a roster of 20 at $55,000 per player is a $1,100,000 payroll. Couple that with the PHF’s per team salary cap of $1.5 million in 2023-24, and I’m not convinced there’s a market for competing leagues. Especially if the PWHPA invades already established PHF locales.

Wow, some unexpected goings-on during the Juno Awards last weekend. Hockey star Connor McDavid made a cameo appearance to intro his “friends” and newly minted Canadian Music Hall of Fame inductees Nickelback, then an Avril Lavigne intro was hijacked by a woman with her bare boobs hanging out. It’s believed she’s the lead singer for a new all-girl group, Nippleback.

Separatist Pierre Karl Péladeau has been Lord of the Montreal Larks for more than a week now, and there hasn’t been the slightest hint of buyer’s remorse from Monsieur Pierre. His takeover of the CFL orphans seems to be popular in La Belle Province, and he and his $1.9 billion bankroll certainly are a godsend to the eight teams that won’t be required to foot the bill for the Larks had they remained foster footballers. It’s a 100 per cent good-news story. So why do I expect the other shoe to drop? Maybe I just don’t trust billionaires.

Here’s Jack Todd of the Montreal Gazette on the Larks freshly minted papa gâteau: “It’s not inconceivable that Péladeau’s tenure as owner of the Alouettes could become an audition of sorts for the NHL. If eight other CFL owners can swallow their distaste for Péladeau’s politics, perhaps some future NHL commissioner less obdurate than Bettman will be open to repatriating the Nordiques.

“For the present, we’ll keep an open mind. The Alouettes were desperately in need of a local owner, preferably French-Canadian, with passion and deep pockets. Péladeau checks all the boxes.

“Yes, Péladeau has his weaknesses. But in the CFL galaxy, he is a superstar, a charismatic billionaire with a chequebook and a plan. We wish him luck.”

This just in: Hell has frozen over! I say that because the Football Reporters of Canada has opened the door to the ultimate Old Boys Club and invited Vicki Hall to enter. Yup, Vicki will become the first female to join 100-plus men in the media wing of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame later this year, but don’t ask me why it took them so long to acknowledge a woman. I’m just surprised that Vicki’s the first, because I thought it would have been a pioneering female football reporter from the 20th century who got the call. One of Robin Brown, Joanne Ireland, Ashley Prest or Judy Owen would have been my choice, but I guess the football reporters don’t have me on speed dial. Either that, or I was in the john when they called for my input.

Just so no one runs off with the wrong notion, that isn’t a slight against Vicki, a deserving inductee who earned her chops at the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald. But she didn’t have to deal with a horse-and-buggy thinker like Cal Murphy, who took absurd measures to prevent females from entering the Winnipeg Blue Bombers changing room in the 1990s. Both Brown and Prest dealt with the Winnipeg GM/coach’s roadblocks, and I’d say that alone qualifies them for sainthood and a spot in the Football Hall.

Hey, check it out. The ReStore outlet at 60 Archibald St. in Good Ol’ Hometown has been peddling Saskatchewan Roughriders gloves for a buck a pair. Yup, just $1. That’s a tough sell in Winnipeg, though. According to 3DownNation, they moved just five pair last week.

Now that I’ve mentioned 3DownNation, let me go on record as saying it’s a fabulous site, full of info and opinion on all things Rouge Football.

Old friend young Eddie Tait, who isn’t so young and doesn’t have a full head of hair anymore, continues to churn out the quality stuff for the Bombers website. It doesn’t seem so long ago that Eddie left the daily grind of newspaper deadlines behind to join Winnipeg FC, and I’d say typing with two Grey Cup rings hasn’t soured his skill. His stuff is better than ever.

Oh, dear, FIFA has expanded the men’s World Cup futbol tournament from 64 to 104 games. You know what that means, don’t you? That’s right, an additional 3,600 dives (4,600 if Italy qualifies) and an extra 400 minutes of fake injury time (500 if Italy qualifies).

I’m not sure what to make of the current state affairs among our Pebble People. I mean, is it good that the same small clutch of curlers keeps winning the big baubles? Check out the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in the past 10 years: The champion skips have been Kerry Einarson (4), Jennifer Jones, Chelsea Carey and Rachel Homan (2 apiece). At the Brier, Brad Gushue (5), Kevin Koe (3), Brendan Bottcher and Pat Simmons (1 apiece), have gone home with the Tankard. Further, on the men’s side, the recently concluded Brier was the first time since 2013 that an Alberta team wasn’t in the final. Has everybody else forgotten how to play the game?

Here’s the odd part for me: I’m delighted that Einarson and her gal pals from Gimli keep winning the Scotties, but I long ago grew weary of watching Gushue win the Brier.

Former Canadian and Olympic champion Ryan Fry says he’s slid from the hack for the last time, but I’m not buying it. I’m wagering we’ll see Small Fry back on the pebble before the next Olympic Trials.

And, finally, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will replace Tom Brady at quarterback next season with Baker Mayfield or Kyle Trask. That’s like replacing Einstein with Homer Simpson as class valedictorian.

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